“I hope you will not find this part of the ceremony trying,” he said in a low voice, and led the girl to a chair. Then he made a signal to the commissionaire.
“What is going to happen?” Kathleen whispered to her companion, and Angel shook his head.
“I can only guess,” he replied in the same tone.
He was looking up at the great safe wherein he knew was stored the wealth of the dead gambler, and wondering at the freakish ingenuity that planned and foresaw this strange scene. The creak of footsteps in the doorway made him turn his head. He saw a white-robed figure, and behind him a black-coated man in attendance, holding on a cushion a golden casket. Then the dread, familiar words brought him to his feet with a shiver:—
“I am the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord; he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: and whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die.”
The clergyman’s solemn voice resounded through the building, and the detective realized that the ashes of the dead man were coming to their last abiding-place. The slow procession moved toward the silent party. Slowly it paced toward the column; then, as the clergyman’s feet rang on the steel stairway that wound upward, he began the Psalm which of all others perhaps most fitted the passing of old Reale:—
“Have mercy upon me, O God, after Thy great goodness.... Wash me thoroughly from my wickedness: and cleanse me from my sin.... Behold, I was shapen in wickedness.... Deliver me from bloodguiltiness, O God....”
Half-way up the column a small gap yawned in the unbroken granite face, and into this the golden cabinet was pushed; then the workman, who had formed one of the little party that wound upward, lifted a smooth cube of polished granite.
“Forasmuch as it hath pleased Almighty God of His great mercy to take unto Himself the soul of our dear brother here departed....”
The mason’s trowel grated on the edges of the cavity, the block of stone was thrust in until it was flush with the surface of the pedestal. Carved on the end of the stone were four words:—