But when he lay back
on the pillow again, he said slowly:
"I want the Chief Constable to come here to-night at eight o'clock. It
will be dark then. He must come. It is important. Will you see to it,
Rockwell?"
He thrust out a hand as though to find Rockwell's, and there was a
gratitude and an appeal in the pressure of his fingers which went to
Rockwell's heart.
"All right, Chief. I'll have him here," Rockwell answered briskly, but
with tears standing in his eyes. Ingolby had, as it were, been stricken
out of the active, sentient, companionable world into a world where he
was alone, detached, solitary. His being seemed suspended in an
atmosphere of misery and helplessness.
"Blind! I am blind!" That was the phrase which kept beating with the
pulses in Ingolby's veins, that throbbed, and throbbed, and throbbed like
engines in a creaking ship which the storm was shaking and pounding in
the vast seas between the worlds. Here was the one incomprehensible,
stupefying fact: nothing else mattered. Every plan he had ever had, every
design which he had made his own by an originality that even his foes
acknowledged, were passing before his brain in swift procession, shining,
magnified, and magnificent, and in that sudden clear-seeing of his soul
he beheld their full value, their exact concrete force and ultimate
effect.
Pages:
229
230
231
232
233
234
235
236
237
238
239
240
241
242
243
244
245
246
247
248
249
250
251
252
253