He went into Mrs. Ilam’s bedroom with a slight swagger, and shut the door. A fire was burning in the grate. He cast a single glance at the bed and its mute and helpless occupant, and putting his little lantern on the mantelpiece, he walked round the room, inspecting its arrangement and its corners. Then, suddenly remembering his own burglarious exploit of forcing an entrance into the room by the window, he approached the window, flung it wide open and stepped outside on to the balcony. Far across the expanse of the Oriental Gardens, in the moonlight, he discerned a figure vaguely moving in the direction of the river. It was a woman’s figure.
“There she is,” he murmured. “Admirable creature! Why did I not meet such a woman when I was younger?”
Then he came in again, shut and fastened the window, and drew the heavy curtains across it, taking care that no chink was left through which light could be seen. Then he began to whistle softly, and he turned on all the electricity in the apartment; there were a cluster of lamps in the ceiling, and two lights over’ the dressing-table, besides the table-lamps, and his own trifling gleam of a lantern. The room was brilliantly, almost blindingly, lit, and every object stood revealed.
He stepped towards the bed, and deliberately gazed into the eyes of the stricken old woman. Mrs. Ilam’s burning orbs blinked at intervals. Otherwise she gave no sign of volition or of life. Jetsam placed his eyes in the fixed line of her gaze, so that they were obliged to exchange a glance. She appeared to be unconscious of it. Only a scarcely perceptible trémulation ran along her arms, which lay stretched, as usual, outside the coverlet, like the arms of a corpse.
“Well,” said Jetsam, “here I am at last, you see. Do you recognize me? I’ve changed, haven’t I, old hag? But you can’t be mistaken in me.”
The pent-up bitterness of a lifetime escaped from him in the tones of his voice. But the old woman showed no symptom that the terrible past was thus revisiting her in its most awful form.
“You thought I was dead, didn’t you?” Jetsam continued. “For over forty years you have been sure that I was dead, and that your crime was one of the thousands of crimes which go unpunished. And look here,” he went on; “if you have any doubt, murderess, as to my identity, look at this. I’ll make you look at it, by heaven!”