that it has vanished like magic, and we are unable to produce it, we may easily find ourselves in the lock-up."
This speech, worded with care and uttered with weight, had the effect of increasing William's distress. Underlying it was the clear assumption that he was in league with June, and this was intolerable to him, less because of her strangely misguided action, than for the reason that the master to whom he had been so long devoted found it impossible to believe his word.
"If only I knew where Miss June was, sir—" he said, miserably.
The old man, with the fragment of caution still left to him, was able to refrain from giving William the lie. It wasn't easy to forbear, since he was quite unable to accept the open and palpable fact that his assistant was in complete ignorance of June's whereabouts. So true it is that the gods first tamper with the reason of those whom they would destroy!
S. Gedge Antiques was in the toils of a powerful and dangerous obsession. He saw William in terms of himself; indeed, he was overtaken by the nemesis which dogs the crooked mind. For the old man was now incapable of seeing things as they were; the monstrous shadow of his own wickedness and folly enshrouded others like a pall. One so shrewd as William's master, who had had such opportunities, moreover, of gauging the young man's worth, should have been the last person in the world to hold him guilty of this elaborate and futile deceit; but the old man was in thrall to the Frankenstein his own evil thoughts had created.
He was sure that William was lying. Just as in the first instance the young man had given the picture to
