“But it’s over now,” said Derrick steadily.
“No, it’s here yet, in this room,” she pointed to the portrait. “He knows. He’s been trying to tell me but cannot.”
“From whom does it come?”
“Wait, sir; you’re not ready yet. Nothing is quite ready, but it will be soon. That’s why you came. The others will come, too.”
He experienced a remarkable sensation of having lost all physical weight, and seemed to catch a low singing note as of a myriad of tiny voices, the far murmur of those who approached from the unknown. He could see Perkins, still motionless, and feel his own body, but this had no significance. As the wireless operator tunes his set till it abstracts from the invisible only that which is carried by its own individual wave-length and remains unaffected by all others, so Derrick began to pick up a series of vibrations that in a queer and remote fashion he recognized, but could not as yet interpret. Then he caught his own tones.
“So this air is full of that which can never die or disappear, and may save or destroy as it is written. It destroyed Millicent and may be the undoing of others unless it is brought to naught.”
“How else could it be?” Perkins covered her pale face, bent her head, and disappeared.
Derrick stared at the portrait, his features transfigured with something that was not altogether wonder. It was all unreal yet enormously real. What surprised him most was that he should be admitted so readily to this “no man’s land” where mystery, like a cloaked figure, moved among the shadows of tragedy. How much was here? How much of it was his own fancy? Who was the real Millicent, the man within the man who had been afraid before he died? How and why did Millicent die? Did evil take on an embodiment and, emerging like an apparition from the unknown, butcher him where he sat? Derrick pictured him, shrinking back into his chair with starting eyes while something moved closer, closer. And then—
A knock sounded at the door.
“If you please, sir, the inventory men would like to come in for a moment.” The impassive mask had fallen over her face again.