A sick thrill passed through Henry Harper. He couldn't make out in the thick November halflight whether on that nail there was really what he thought there was. A wave of curiosity forced him to enter the yard. The whip was hanging there as usual. The heavy handle bound with strips of brass shone through the gloom. The sight of it seemed again to hold him in a thrall of terror. As if it were a nightmare he fought to throw it off. He had been a sailor; he was the goalkeeper for the Blackhampton Rovers; he was earning two pounds a week; he had a velvet collar to his overcoat; there was no need to be afraid of...
"Now, young man?"
A thick, wheezy grunt came out of the inner murk of the yard and sent a chill down the spine of Henry Harper.
"What can I do for yer?"
Auntie, cheerfully alcoholic as ever, stood before him in all her shapeless obscenity. She stood as of old, exuding gin and humor and latent savagery. She had changed so little that he felt he had not changed either. At first he could not believe that she did not recognize him.
Auntie stood eyeing him with disfavor. The good clothes, the clean collar, the polished boots told against him heavily. Most probably a detective.
"What do you want for that, missus?" He pointed to the nail.
"Not for sale." The light he had seen so often sprang to her eyes. "You can have anythink else. Scrap iron, rags and bones, waste paper, bedsteads, but yer can't have that." And Auntie looked at him, wheezing humorously at the idea of anyone wanting to buy such an article. Suddenly Henry Harper met again the eyes of Medusa in their depth and power.
At once he knew why he had stayed those long years under her roof. It was not merely that he had nowhere else to go. There was a living devil in the soul of Auntie and it was far stronger than anything at present in the soul of Henry Harper. Already he could feel the old helpless terror striking into him again. He was forgetting that he had been a sailor, he was forgetting the Blackhampton Rovers, he was forgetting his two pounds a week....
"Well, missus, if yer won't, yer won't," he said, with a mighty effort of the will.