Four Weird Tales | Page 3

time and lose opportunities for
development.
And there was one individual with whom Jones had long understood clearly he had a
very large account to settle, and towards the accomplishment of which all the main
currents of his being seemed to bear him with unswerving purpose. For, when he first
entered the insurance office as a junior clerk ten years before, and through a glass door
had caught sight of this man seated in an inner room, one of his sudden overwhelming
flashes of intuitive memory had burst up into him from the depths, and he had seen, as in
a flame of blinding light, a symbolical picture of the future rising out of a dreadful past,
and he had, without any act of definite volition, marked down this man for a real account
to be settled.
"With that man I shall have much to do," he said to himself, as he noted the big face look
up and meet his eye through the glass. "There is something I cannot shirk--a vital relation
out of the past of both of us."
And he went to his desk trembling a little, and with shaking knees, as though the memory
of some terrible pain had suddenly laid its icy hand upon his heart and touched the scar of
a great horror. It was a moment of genuine terror when their eyes had met through the
glass door, and he was conscious of an inward shrinking and loathing that seized upon

him with great violence and convinced him in a single second that the settling of this
account would be almost, perhaps, more than he could manage.
The vision passed as swiftly as it came, dropping back again into the submerged region of
his consciousness; but he never forgot it, and the whole of his life thereafter became a
sort of natural though undeliberate preparation for the fulfilment of the great duty when
the time should be ripe.
In those days--ten years ago--this man was the Assistant Manager, but had since been
promoted as Manager to one of the company's local branches; and soon afterwards Jones
had likewise found himself transferred to this same branch. A little later, again, the
branch at Liverpool, one of the most important, had been in peril owing to
mismanagement and defalcation, and the man had gone to take charge of it, and again, by
mere chance apparently, Jones had been promoted to the same place. And this pursuit of
the Assistant Manager had continued for several years, often, too, in the most curious
fashion; and though Jones had never exchanged a single word with him, or been so much
as noticed indeed by the great man, the clerk understood perfectly well that these moves
in the game were all part of a definite purpose. Never for one moment did he doubt that
the Invisibles behind the veil were slowly and surely arranging the details of it all so as to
lead up suitably to the climax demanded by justice, a climax in which himself and the
Manager would play the leading roles.
"It is inevitable," he said to himself, "and I feel it may be terrible; but when the moment
comes I shall be ready, and I pray God that I may face it properly and act like a man."
Moreover, as the years passed, and nothing happened, he felt the horror closing in upon
him with steady increase, for the fact was Jones hated and loathed the Manager with an
intensity of feeling he had never before experienced towards any human being. He shrank
from his presence, and from the glance of his eyes, as though he remembered to have
suffered nameless cruelties at his hands; and he slowly began to realise, moreover, that
the matter to be settled between them was one of very ancient standing, and that the
nature of the settlement was a discharge of accumulated punishment which would
probably be very dreadful in the manner of its fulfilment.
When, therefore, the chief cashier one day informed him that the man was to be in
London again--this time as General Manager of the head office--and said that he was
charged to find a private secretary for him from among the best clerks, and further
intimated that the selection had fallen upon himself, Jones accepted the promotion quietly,
fatalistically, yet with a degree of inward loathing hardly to be described. For he saw in
this merely another move in the evolution of the inevitable Nemesis which he simply
dared not seek to frustrate by any personal consideration; and at the same time he was
conscious of a certain feeling of relief that the suspense of waiting might soon be
mitigated. A secret sense of satisfaction, therefore, accompanied the unpleasant change,
and Jones was able to