He knew not whence the voice came, yet a power beyond himself compelled implicit obedience. Scarcely able to walk, he tottered toward the casement at the other end of the wide room.
He was destined never to reach it. With a dismal cry, he stopped midway. The paper fluttered out of his hand. Suddenly, he fell face down on the stone floor, a slight foam on his lips.
CHAPTER XXVII
HARDLY had this thing come to pass, when a number of startled faces appeared on the outer side of the shutterless window. Shaking and rattling did not serve to force an entrance, but by the time the combined pressure of four or five vigorous and determined men had been applied, the framework began to yield. Very soon they had made their way into the room.
Simon Heriot was dead.
One glance at the horrible distorted face was enough to tell Gervase Heriot what had occurred. There was no need for the young man to get down on his knees, candle in hand, and loosen the man’s clothing. Simon Heriot had already breathed his last.
The men who had come with Gervase into the room belonged one and all to the Lord Chamberlain’s Company. The first of these was William Shakespeare whose fantastically ingenious device had been fraught with such tragic consequences. It had succeeded beyond hope or expectation. Richard Burbage’s had been the voice which had re-echoed down the wide chimney with such ghastly effect.
“Dead?” said the playwright, looking round at the circle of astonished and half-terrified faces. And then he said, with a passionate solemnity, with a look of terror in his own dark-glowing eyes, “God rest his soul. His crime was black, but he has paid for it with usury. God rest his unhappy soul.”
A chill of silence fell upon all who had entered the room. In a sense, they had done this man to death, and perhaps that thought was even more potent in their minds than the grim and awful tragedy they had witnessed.
After a while, the spell was broken. Burbage picked up the paper that had fallen to the floor. He examined it by the ghostly light of the candles, and then handed it to the man who had caused it to be written.