Of course, God never heard his prayers, they could not get up to God. Those beasts had caught them in a net and God never heard them. There had always been that one thought, even in the darkest hour—that thought that God knew and would come to his aid.
The face, the rigid face, worked and wrinkled horribly. Ripples of agony passed up and down it like the ripples upon the wind-blown surface of a pool. It was not human now any longer, and the curious and lovers of what is terrible may see such faces in the museum of the mad painter of pictures at Brussels.
Then, as a stone falls, consciousness flashed away, though the face still moved and wrinkled automatically.
Presently the door of the cell was unlocked, and Wilson Guest came in. He was rather drunk and rather angry also.
Sir William had come back from telling Rathbone the truth about what had been done to him and what they proposed to do. Guest had been waiting in the study with great expectation. He congratulated himself on having worked up his patron sufficiently to make him visit Rathbone himself and inform him of his fate. He had not thought that Gouldesbrough could have been brought to do any such thing, and he had awaited his chief's arrival with intense and cynical expectation.
When at last Sir William did enter the room, his face was very pale, but the passion of hideous anger had quite gone from it, and it was calm and quiet. The eyes no longer blazed, the lips were set in their usual curve.
"Have you told him, William?" Guest asked in his malicious voice. "Have you told him everything? Come along, then, let's go into the laboratory at once and see what he thinks about it."
There was no response. Sir William seemed as a man in a dream. When at length he did answer his voice appeared to come from a long distance, and it was sad and almost kindly.
"Yes," he said, in that gentle mournful voice; "yes, my friend, I have told him. Poor, poor fellow! How terrible his thoughts must be now. I wish I could do something for him. The spectacle of such agony is indeed terrible. Poor, poor fellow!"
He sank into a chair, his head fell upon his breast, his fingers interlocked, and he seemed to be sleeping.