“I do not know the whole, but you do, and I mean you to tell me and write it down; I will sign it alone. I am known and have power in many places, but it is useful to have instruments; I have bought mine, and only wish to use what I purchased. Sit down and write.” Nicholas stood sullen and silent. “Do you fancy, because your organ is partly built and placed, that no accident may happen to it? I can do more than you think; you weigh an act with which no one but I shall be acquainted against the possible destruction of your favorite, the fall of your ambition, the collapse of your whole life.”
“No one can put it to me more forcibly than I have done to myself,” said Nicholas moodily; “but, unluckily for me, I have a conscience left.”
“Forget it for twenty-four hours.”
“You do not ask me to forget it, but to disregard it, to gag it. I know what I lose in breaking my bond, and I believe in your power sufficiently to be sure that even my friend would not have opportunity to rebuke me in life.”
“Why do you talk about it?” interrupted Lemoinne with the cold smile peculiar to him. “To discuss a thing, and weigh pros and cons, is to yield; you do not reason against what you have made up your mind to refuse.”
Nicholas gazed at the man in horror. Who was he to go thus mercilessly to the heart of the question, to see his hidden thoughts, to interpret the secret of all the uneasiness he had felt ever since his friend had spoken those light but fatal words? Who? A master stronger than himself; one whom it was little use to resist now, no doubt, since he had not had the fortitude to resist him at first. It ended in his yielding, but not without the most terrible self-contempt; self-reproach was nothing to it. He wrote what he knew; as he wrote it all came back to him, much as he had honestly tried not to hear or understand the details. Lemoinne alone signed the paper, and bade him take it to a certain address before morning.
“If you change your mind or try to deceive me, I shall know it,” he said coldly as he left, “and all the difference will be that you will lose your hopes, as well as Brederode his life.”
Nicholas did as he was bidden, and from that day the little peace he had had before fled. The day of the execution came, and he could not resist going to see his friend pay the penalty of his treachery. His tongue was parched and his eyes bloodshot; he skulked behind people in the crowd, and wore his cap as low as he could over his forehead; but nothing availed him, and when the axe fell he felt as if his own soul had been under it instead of the head of his friend. Feverishly and recklessly, all but despairingly, he returned to his work, but though his brain and hands had not lost their cunning, the impressions of that day clouded everything else in his mind, and he had no heart for anything. Two years sped on, and Nicholas Verkloep, with his glowing reputation, was more of an enigma than ever; but it would be impossible to describe the many phases of his mental delirium tremens during that time. The organ was near completion, and Count Stromwael was now as proud of it as the maker. Lemoinne visited Nicholas once more before the end, and this time at the place where the contract was first made. It was the same hour, too. He began by congratulating him on his success so far, then examined the carvings, and smiled as he noticed his own face repeated many times.
“And here is Brederode’s,” he said, as he pointed to the figure personifying the Choir of Thrones. “What made you put him in?”
“Because, as you well know, his face is always with me,” said Nicholas, emboldened by his very complicity with his terrible master. “It was a relief to me to make the image a sort of reality, to give tangible expression to my remorse.”