"The vicar took my arm and walked me up to his sanctum, a fine spacious chamber, beautified with that simplicity which throws a wonderful dignity over all, and tends to show how in omission so much more refinement is to be discovered than in ornament. Touches of the vicar's keen discernment of those things which are worthy and noble were revealed on every hand—knowledge of this sort is older than ten thousand years. The room received one like a friend. The alcoves were filled with well-bound books, there was a superb Persian carpet, old gate-legged tables—oak was there everywhere; in the beams and the shelves and the mighty writing desk. The servant had brought in a small table with syphons and spirits, and had set a lamp upon it. 'Help yourself,' said the vicar.
"I poured out a dose of whisky and was lifting it for a squirt of soda when all at once I saw Fear; not apprehension, not foreboding, but FEAR—the glass fell from my hand and my fingers sagged on the handle of the syphon. I saw my reflection in a long glass, and my face was bleached to an unhealthy dull whiteness.
"Suddenly like a shot, right in the middle of things, I found myself wondering about poor Price. And I wasn't only wondering somehow I was horribly uneasy about him. It came to me that I had been heartless to leave him all alone with the statue. At last I couldn't stand the strain any longer. I got up.
"'Vicar,' I said, 'I'm going back to see if Price is all right. It will sound quite mad to you, I expect, but if you want to know the sober truth, I will tell you that I have just seen him in a vision: he was in trouble, I know. But come, let us get into the car. I have never told anyone my whole story yet, but I shall like to tell you about Ombos and his statue. I will tell you on the way back to Abbot's Ely. It is about time, in fact, that I tried to classify what I have learned.'
"I then briefly related the story of Ombos and our acquaintance. I concealed nothing, dwelling on the irresistible alluring influence of the bronze statue. I described the depression, the despair, the overpowering moral weakness which seemed to follow me since the Albertus Magnus had become one of my possessions. In short, I lifted the curtain, for the first time, and showed the vicar a true picture of the strange world I had moved in for the last few weeks.
"When we had returned and backed the car into the coach house we walked across the lawn to the back door. Here we met Clayton, the butler. He appeared to be frightened, and told me that he had heard a kind of quivering, sobbing voice coming from the library. He thought Mr. Price was ill. We went to the door. It was locked, and an application of a spare key proved that the other key had been left in the lock inside. We knocked loudly, and called. There was no reply. Clayton's conviction that 'something had happened' worked on my nerves frightfully, and in the end the vicar and I forced open the door with some gardening tools.
"Something had happened.
"The room was in complete darkness, and at first nothing could be discerned at all. A slight wind had got up in the last half an hour; and it rustled the trailers of ivy against the opened windows. The heavy curtains moved carelessly in the draught, and the trees creaked faintly. But beyond these inevitable noises, the room was quiet. Then gradually, the outline of the room became visible and the framework of the window began to shape itself dimly before my eyes. In the hazy light from the glass doors, and the vague light of a lamp in the hall, I saw that the chesterfield in the window bay where Price so often lounged was tenanted. A gleam of his light tweed suit showed there and across that.... Oh, I fully expected to see the other thing! Across that there was an obscure greenish shadow.
"I walked towards it, when suddenly the shadow shot upwards and was lost to sight. Then the springs of the chesterfield creaked and wheezed, the same as they will when suddenly released from pressure. Clayton came in at that moment holding a candelabra aloft and the feeble flames disclosed poor old Price. He was on his back, his knees slightly drawn up. The face was not the face of a man at all—it was a horrible mask of contorted terror. His eyes were opened and fixed; the mouth was twisted in a gape of fearful wonder.
"'Run, Clayton,' said I; 'a doctor and a policeman!' Clayton placed the candelabra on the table and bounced out and down the front steps.