On reaching the house, the old man became suddenly silent again, falling back as if by habit into the morose absorption that marked his daily life; but as he turned to mount the stairs to his own room, he paused and his curious light-blue eyes travelled over his nephew's face.
"Good-night!" he said. "You make a good listener."
And John—still confused and silent—retired to bed, to lie awake for many hours, partly thrilled and partly elated by the awesome thought that there was a madman in the house.
But all that had happened seven years ago, and now Andrew Henderson lay waiting for his end. In those seven years John had passed through the mill of deadly monotony that saps even youth, and lulls every instinct save hope. The first enthusiasm of romance that had wrapped the discovery of his uncle's secret had faded out with time. By slow degrees he had learned—partly from his own observation, partly from the old man's occasional fanatic outbursts—that the strange chapel with its metal symbol and marble floor was not the outcome of a private whim, but the manifestation of a creed that boasted a small but ardent band of followers. He had learned that—to themselves, if not to the world—these devotees were known as the Mystics; that their articles of faith were preserved in a secret book designated the Scitsym, which passed in rotation each year from one to another of the six Arch-Mystics, remaining in the care of each for two months out of the twelve. He had discovered that London was the Centre of this sect; and that its fundamental belief was the anticipation of a mysterious prophet—human, and yet divinely inspired—by whose coming the light was to extend from the small and previously unknown band across the whole benighted world.
He had learned all these things. He had been stirred to a passing awe by the discovery that his uncle was, in his own person, actually one of the profound Six who formed the Council of the sect and to whom alone the secrets of its creed were known; and for three successive years his interest and curiosity had been kindled when Andrew Henderson travelled to England and returned with the Arch-Councillor—an old blind man of seventy—who invariably spent one day and night mysteriously closeted with his host and then left, having deposited the sacred Scitsym with his own hands in the tall iron safe that stood in Henderson's study. But that annual excitement had lessened with time. Even a madman may become monotonous when we live with him, day in, day out, for seven long years; and gradually the attitude of John's mind had changed with the passage of time. The sense of adventure and triumphant enterprise had steadily receded; the knowledge that he was working out a slow, distasteful probation had advanced. Reluctantly and yet definitely he had realized that his position was not to come and conquer, but to watch and wait; and this consciousness of a tacitly expected end had grown with the years—with the growth of his mind and body. It was not that he was hard-natured. The regularity with which he despatched his yearly money to his mother—reserving the merest fraction for himself—precluded that idea. But he was young and human, and he was youthfully and humanly greedy to possess the good things of life for himself and for the one being he passionately loved. It would, indeed, have been an enthusiast in virtue who could have blamed him for counting upon dead men's shoes.
And now the shoes were all but empty! He stood watching his uncle die!
Having stayed almost motionless for several minutes, he glanced at the clock; then moved to the bed, taking a bottle and a medicine spoon from the dressing-table as he passed.
"Time for your medicine, uncle!" he said, in his quiet, level voice.
But the sick man did not seem to hear.