Four Weird Tales | Page 7

he crossed the streets often ahead of him, diving down
alleys without hesitation, and the other followed always without correction.
The pavements were very full, and the usual night crowds of London were surging to and
fro in the glare of the shop lights, but somehow no one impeded their rapid movements,
and they seemed to pass through the people as if they were smoke. And, as they went, the
pedestrians and traffic grew less and less, and they soon passed the Mansion House and
the deserted space in front of the Royal Exchange, and so on down Fenchurch Street and
within sight of the Tower of London, rising dim and shadowy in the smoky air.
Jones remembered all this perfectly well, and thought it was his intense preoccupation
that made the distance seem so short. But it was when the Tower was left behind and they
turned northwards that he began to notice how altered everything was, and saw that they
were in a neighbourhood where houses were suddenly scarce, and lanes and fields
beginning, and that their only light was the stars overhead. And, as the deeper
consciousness more and more asserted itself to the exclusion of the surface happenings of
his mere body during the day, the sense of exhaustion vanished, and he realised that he
was moving somewhere in the region of causes behind the veil, beyond the gross
deceptions of the senses, and released from the clumsy spell of space and time.
Without great surprise, therefore, he turned and saw that his companion had altered, had
shed his overcoat and black hat, and was moving beside him absolutely without sound.
For a brief second he saw him, tall as a tree, extending through space like a great shadow,
misty and wavering of outline, followed by a sound like wings in the darkness; but, when
he stopped, fear clutching at his heart, the other resumed his former proportions, and
Jones could plainly see his normal outline against the green field behind.
Then the secretary saw him fumbling at his neck, and at the same moment the black
beard came away from the face in his hand.
"Then you are Thorpe!" he gasped, yet somehow without overwhelming surprise.
They stood facing one another in the lonely lane, trees meeting overhead and hiding the

stars, and a sound of mournful sighing among the branches.
"I am Thorpe," was the answer in a voice that almost seemed part of the wind. "And I
have come out of our far past to help you, for my debt to you is large, and in this life I
had but small opportunity to repay."
Jones thought quickly of the man's kindness to him in the office, and a great wave of
feeling surged through him as he began to remember dimly the friend by whose side he
had already climbed, perhaps through vast ages of his soul's evolution.
"To help me now?" he whispered.
"You will understand me when you enter into your real memory and recall how great a
debt I have to pay for old faithful kindnesses of long ago," sighed the other in a voice like
falling wind.
"Between us, though, there can be no question of debt," Jones heard himself saying, and
remembered the reply that floated to him on the air and the smile that lightened for a
moment the stern eyes facing him.
"Not of debt, indeed, but of privilege."
Jones felt his heart leap out towards this man, this old friend, tried by centuries and still
faithful. He made a movement to seize his hand. But the other shifted like a thing of mist,
and for a moment the clerk's head swam and his eyes seemed to fail.
"Then you are dead?" he said under his breath with a slight shiver.
"Five years ago I left the body you knew," replied Thorpe. "I tried to help you then
instinctively, not fully recognising you. But now I can accomplish far more."
With an awful sense of foreboding and dread in his heart, the secretary was beginning to
understand.
"It has to do with--with--?"
"Your past dealings with the Manager," came the answer, as the wind rose louder among
the branches overhead and carried off the remainder of the sentence into the air.
Jones's memory, which was just beginning to stir among the deepest layers of all, shut
down suddenly with a snap, and he followed his companion over fields and down
sweet-smelling lanes where the air was fragrant and cool, till they came to a large house,
standing gaunt and lonely in the shadows at the edge of a wood. It was wrapped in utter
stillness, with windows heavily draped in black, and the clerk, as he looked, felt such an
overpowering wave of sadness invade him