COWERING in body and spirit in that dark corner, time, for June, became of no account. Perhaps, after all, she might be allowed to die where she was. As a kind of inertia crept upon her she was able to draw something of comfort from the thought. It would be better than the river or being run over in the street.
She grew very cold; yet a lowering of the body’s temperature induced a heightened consciousness. Aches and pains sprang into life; the forces of her mind began to reassert themselves; the phantoms about her took on new powers of menace. Gradually it became clear to June, under the goad of this new and sharper phase of suffering, that mere passivity could not induce the death she longed for.
No, it was not in that way the end would come. She would have to go into the shadow-land beyond the lamp, and seek some positive means of destroying herself. For that reason she must hold on to the fragment of will that now remained to her. It alone could release her from the awful pit in which she was now engulfed.
She gathered herself for an effort to move towards the fog-encircled light at the entrance to the street. But the effort, when made, amounted to nothing. Her limbs were paper, all power of volition was gone.
The October raw struck to her blood. She began to whimper miserably. To pain of mind was added pain of body, but the delicate apparatus from whose harmony sprang the fuse of action was out of gear. Something must be done; yet no matter how definite the task, any form of doing was beyond her now.
At this dire moment, however, help came. It came, moreover, in an unlooked-for way. She heard a door slam over head. There was the sound of a match being struck, and then came a gingerly shuffle of feet on the stone stairs.
Someone was coming down. June cowered still lower into the dark recess at the back of the stairway. A man was approaching. And by the flicker of the match which he threw away as he reached the floor of the vestibule she saw that the man was Keller.
Faint and but momentary as was the glimpse afforded, June, with every sense strung again to the point of intensity, saw that under Keller’s arm was a brown paper parcel. The sight of it was like a charm. Some fabulous djinnee might have lurked in that neat package, who commanded a miraculous power of reaction upon the human will.
Keller struck a second match and peered into the shadows. June knew that he was looking to see if she had lingered there, but the light could not pierce to the corner in which she crouched; and it burnt itself out, leaving him none the wiser.
Without striking another match Keller moved away from her towards the doorway, and as he did so June felt a swift release of heart and brain. A thrill of new energy ran through her. No sooner had Keller passed out of the vestibule, beyond the lamp into the fog, than without conscious impulse or design she began to follow him.
It may have been the reasoned act of a lucid being, but at first it did not appear to be so. Once, however, her limbs were moving, all her faculties, now intensely awake, seemed as if by magic to bear them company. As soon as she reached the open street, with Keller a clear ten yards ahead, the keen air on her face had an effect of strong wine. Her nerves felt again the sense of motion; the impulse of the natural fighter unfurled strong pinions within her. All the virile sense and the indomitable will of a sound inheritance rallied to her need.
Growing sensibly stronger at every yard, she followed Keller round the corner into Manning Square. The mist was thick, the lamps poor and few, but as well as she could she kept on his track. Lurking pantherlike in the deep shadows of the house-walls, she had approached within five yards of him by the time he had turned the corner into a bye-street. He went a few yards along this, and then zigzagged into a squalid ill-smelling thoroughfare whose dismal length seemed unending.
June had no difficulty in keeping up with these twists and winds, for Keller, impeded by the fog, moved slowly. For her, however, the fog had its own special problem, since there was a danger of losing him if he was allowed to get too far ahead; and yet if his steps were dogged too closely there was always the fear that he might turn round suddenly and see her.
At last the interminable street seemed to be nearing its end. For June, whose every faculty was now strung up to an unnatural acuteness, saw but a short distance in front the brightly lit awning of the Underground looming through the fog.
In a flash she realized the nature of the peril. Only too surely was this the bourn for which Keller was making. Once within its precincts and her last remaining hope would be gone.
It must be now or never. The spur of occasion drove deep in her heart. She knew but too well that the hope was tragically small, but wholly desperate as she was, with the penalty of failure simply not to be met, she would put all to the touch.
Closer and closer she crept up behind the quarry. But the entrance to the Tube loomed now so near that it began to seem certain that she must lose him before she could attempt what she had to do. Abruptly, however, within ten yards or so of his goal, Keller stopped. He began to search the pockets of his overcoat for a box of matches to relight his pipe which had gone out. While so doing, and in the preoccupation of the moment, he took the parcel from under his right arm, and set it rather carelessly beneath his left.
Providence had given June her chance. Like a falcon, she swooped forward. Aim and timing incredibly true, at the instant Keller struck a match and bent over his pipe, her fingers closed on the Van Roon, and whisked it out of his unguarded grasp.