Turnbull seemed to frown and flinch for a moment.
“It does not much matter what you call it,”
he said, “so long as you keep out of its way.”
The bushes broke and snapped abruptly behind them,
and a very tall figure towered above Turnbull with
an arrogant stoop and a projecting chin, a chin of
which the shape showed queerly even in its shadow
upon the path.
“You see that is not so easy,” said MacIan
between his teeth.
They looked up into the eyes of the Master, but looked
only for a moment. The eyes were full of a frozen
and icy wrath, a kind of utterly heartless hatred.
His voice was for the first time devoid of irony.
There was no more sarcasm in it than there is in an
iron club.
“You will be inside the building in three minutes,”
he said, with pulverizing precision, “or you
will be fired on by the artillery at all the windows.
There is too much talking in this garden; we intend
to close it. You will be accommodated indoors.”
“Ah!” said MacIan, with a long and satisfied
sigh, “then I was right.”
And he turned his back and walked obediently towards
the building. Turnbull seemed to canvass for
a few minutes the notion of knocking the Master down,
and then fell under the same almost fairy fatalism
as his companion. In some strange way it did
seem that the more smoothly they yielded, the more
swiftly would events sweep on to some great collision.
As they advanced towards the asylum they looked up
at its rows on rows of windows, and understood the
Master’s material threat. By means of
that complex but concealed machinery which ran like
a network of nerves over the whole fabric, there had
been shot out under every window-ledge rows and rows
of polished-steel cylinders, the cold miracles of
modern gunnery. They commanded the whole garden
and the whole country-side, and could have blown to
pieces an army corps.
This silent declaration of war had evidently had its
complete effect. As MacIan and Turnbull walked
steadily but slowly towards the entrance hall of the
institution, they could see that most, or at least
many, of the patients had already gathered there as
well as the staff of doctors and the whole regiment
of keepers and assistants. But when they entered
the lamp-lit hall, and the high iron door was clashed
to and locked behind them, yet a new amazement leapt
into their eyes, and the stalwart Turnbull almost
fell. For he saw a sight which was indeed, as
MacIan had said—either the Day of Judgement
or a dream.
