His own turn would come some day. Verrill, sunken into his chair, put his hands over his eyes. Yes his own turn would come. There was no escape. That dreadful face would rise again before his eyes. He would bow his back to the scourge of nations, he would roll helpless beneath the wheels of the great car. How to face that prospect with fortitude! How to look into those terrible grey eyes with calm! Oh, the terror of that gorgon face, oh, the horror of those sightless, lightless grey eyes!
But suddenly midnight struck. He heard the strokes come booming upward from the city streets. His vigil was all but over.
Verrill opened the bottle of wine, breaking the seal that had been affixed to the cork on the night of the first meeting of the club. Filling his glass, he rose in his place. His eyes swept the table, and while for the last time the memories came thronging back, his lips formed the words:
"To the Absent Ones: to you, Curtice, Anderson, Brill, to you, Copeland, to you, Stryker, to you, Arnold, to you all, my old comrades, all you old familiar faces who are absent to-night."
He emptied the glass, but immediately filled it again. The last toast was to be drunk, the last of all. Verrill, the glass raised, straightened himself.
But even as he stood there, glass in hand, he shivered slightly. He made note of it for the moment, yet his emotions had so shaken him during all that evening that he could well understand the little shudder that passed over him for a moment.
But he caught himself glancing at the windows. All were shut. The doors of the hall were closed, the flames of the chandeliers were steady. Whence came then this certain sense of coolness that so suddenly had invaded the air? The coolness was not disagreeable, but none the less the temperature of the room had been lowered, at least so he could fancy. Yet already he was dismissing the matter from his mind. No doubt the weather had changed suddenly.
In the next second, however, another peculiar circumstance forced itself upon his attention. The stillness of the Banquet Hall, placed as it was, at the top of one of the highest buildings in the city was no matter of comment to Verrill. He was long since familiar with it. But for all that, even through the closed windows, and through the medium of steel and brick and marble that composed the building the indefinite murmur of the city's streets had always made itself felt in the hall. It was faint, yet it was distinct. That bourdon of life to which he had listened that very evening was not wholly to be shut out, yet now, even in this supreme moment of the occasion it was impossible for Verrill to ignore the fancy that an unusual stillness had all at once widened about him, like the widening of unseen ripples. There was not a sound, and he told himself that stillness such as this was only the portion of the deaf. No faintest tremor of noise rose from the streets. The vast building itself had suddenly grown as soundless as the unplumbed depth of the sea. But Verrill shook himself; all evening fancies such as these had besieged him, even now they were prolonging the ordeal. Once this last toast drunk and he was released from his duty: He raised his glass again, and then in a loud clear voice he said:
"Gentlemen, I give you the toast of the evening." And as he emptied the glass, a quick, light footstep sounded in the corridor outside the door.
Verrill looked up in great annoyance. The corridor led to but one place, the door of the Banquet Hall, and any one coming down the corridor at so brisk a pace could have but one intention—that of entering the hall. Verrill frowned at the idea of an intruder. His orders had been of the strictest. That a stranger should thrust himself upon his company at this of all moments was exasperating.