‘When I was a child,’ went on Bellingham, without ruth, ‘I was told the story of a prisoner condemned to solitary confinement. To this punishment was added the further horror of perpetual watching. A small hole was drilled in the cell-door through which an eye never ceased to peer at the prisoner. That was an allegory, and I have never forgotten it. Even now, you fellows, we are being watched.’
Some of us, I swear, looked round nervously, half expecting to catch sight of that vigilant eye. I, for my part, was angry. ‘That’s not an allegory, Bellingham,’ I said. ‘It’s a damned travesty. You conceive God to be a kind of Peeping Tom, with omnipotence added. I would rather be an atheist than believe that.’
‘Perhaps you would rather be an atheist,’ retorted Bellingham. ‘Perhaps I would rather be an atheist. But I can’t be. Nor can you. Did any of you notice the name of the street?’
‘Name of the street?’ echoed some one. ‘What street?’
‘This street,’ said Bellingham.
‘We’re not in a street. We’re in a café,’ said Hayter truculently. ‘At least I thought so a moment ago. I begin to fancy we must be in a mission-hall.’
At the moment no one could remember having noticed the name. ‘Well, I did notice it,’ said Bellingham. ‘It is the Street of the Eye.’
Mulroyd shrugged his shoulders, a gesture plainly disdainful of this touch of melodrama.
‘Well,’ said I, ‘what of it?’ For the fellow’s morbidity had spoiled my temper. I expected a night of bad dreams.
‘The Street of the Eye,’ repeated Bellingham. ‘We’re all in that street; every man born is in that street. And we shall never get out of it.’