He took the cat in his arms and stroked her gently. She purred and rubbed her face against his and moved her feet up and down, sheathing and unsheathing her claws in his robe with evident delight.
The crowd grew still. Instinctively they knew that something big was happening in the soul of the man they were watching.
“This little cat, my friends,” he said, “is an innocent actor in a tragedy this morning, but she is the agent of one who is not innocent.”
He fixed his gaze on Van Meter, who stirred with uneasy amazement.
“They say that cats sometimes incarnate the souls of dead men. This one is the soul of a living man, my good friend, Deacon Arnold Van Meter, who had her brought here this morning.”
The Deacon turned red, drew his head down as though he would pull it within his shoulders, and shrank from the gaze of the crowd.
Gordon handed the cat back to the young man, whispered something to him, and he disappeared.
Then, walking up to the pulpit, he snatched off its crimson cloth and threw it behind him. He ran his big muscular hands into the throat of his robe, ripped it open, tore it from his arms, crushed it into a shapeless mass and threw it on the floor.
He snatched up the golden lectern pulpit, hurled it back into the comer, and moved the little table with its vase of roses into its place. He did this quickly, without a word or an exclamation to break the awful stillness with which the crowd watched him.
They knew that a tremendous drama was being enacted before them. So intense was the excitement the people on the back tiers of the galleries sprang impulsively to their feet and stood on the pews.