to him. President Kruger was reported as about to visit President McKinley for the purpose of securing mediation in some South African war; and Senator Lodge had made a speech asking for an army of one hundred thousand men in, of all places, the Philippine Islands. The twentieth century, and with it some wonderful events, had stolen on him as he slept—if, indeed, he had slept—there could be no doubt of that.
He found his hands trembling again, and, fearing another collapse, threw himself upon the bed. Then, as drowsiness stole on him, he thought of the five years gone since last he had yielded to that feeling, and started up, afraid to sleep. He saw lying on the table the unopened telegrams, and tore them open. Some referred to sales of oil, and other business transactions; one was to inform Brassfield that a man named Alvord would not meet him in New York as promised, and one was in cipher, and signed "Stevens."
He took from his pocket the letters of Brassfield, and read them. One or two were invitations to social functions in Bellevale. One was a bill for dues in a boating-club; another contained the tabulated pedigree of a horse owned in Kentucky. A very brief one was in the same handwriting as the missive he had first read, was signed "E. W.," and merely said that she would be at home in the evening. But most of them related to the business of the Brassfield Oil Company, and referred to transactions in oil.
He lay back on the bed again, and thought, thought, thought, beginning with the furthest stretch of memory, and coming down carefully and consecutively—to the yawning chasm which had opened in his life and swallowed up five years. Time and again, he worked down to this abyss, and was forced to stop. He had heard of loss of memory from illness, but this was nothing of the sort. He had been tired and nervous that night at Elm Springs Junction, but not ill; and now he was in robust health. Perhaps some great fit of passion had torn that obliterating furrow through his mind. Perhaps in those five years he had become changed from the man of strict integrity who had so well managed the Hazelhurst Bank, into the monster who had robbed Eugene Brassfield of—his clothes, his property, the most dearly personal of his possessions—these, certainly (for Amidon knew the rule of evidence which brands as a thief the possessor of stolen goods); and who could tell of what else? Letters, bags, purses, money—these any vulgar criminal might have, and bear no deeper guilt than that of theft; but, the clothes! Mr. Amidon shuddered as his logic carried him on from deduction to reduction—to murder, and the ghastly putting away of murder's fruit. Imagination threw its limelight over the horrid scene—the deep pool or tarn sending up oilily its bubbles of accusation; the shadowy wood with its bulging mound of earth and leaves swept by revealing rains and winds; the moldy vat of corrosive liquid eating away the damning evidence; the box with its accursed stains, shipped anywhere away from the fatal spot, by boat or ship, to be relentlessly traced back—and he shivered in fearful wonder as to how the crime had been committed. In some way, he felt sure, Eugene Brassfield's body must have been removed from those natty clothes of his, before Florian Amidon could have put them on, and with them donned the personality of their former owner.
And here entered a mystery deeper still—the strange deception he seemed to impose on the dead man's acquaintances. And this filled him, somehow, with the most abject dread and fear. Brassfield seemed to have been a well-known man; for porters and clerks in New York do not call the obscure countryman by name. To step out on the street was, perhaps, to run into the very arms of some one who would penetrate the disguise. Yet he could not long remain in this room; his very retirement—any extraordinary behavior (and how did he know Brassfield's ordinary courses?)—would soon advertise his presence. Amidon walked to the window and peered down into the street. His eyes traveled to the opposite windows, and finally in the blind stare of absent-mindedness became fixed on a gold-and-black sign which he began stupidly spelling out, over and over. "Madame le Claire," it read, "Clairvoyant and Occultist." Not an idea was associated in his mind with the sign until the word "mystery," "mystery," began sounding in his ears—naturally enough, one would say, in the circumstances. Then the letters of the word floated before his eyes; and finally he consciously saw the full sign stretching across two windows: "Madame le Claire, Clairvoyant and Occultist. All Mysteries Solved."
Florian stared at this sign, until he became conscious of deep weariness at so long standing on his feet. Then he saw, blossoming, the multiplying lights of an early winter's dusk—so numbly had the time slipped by. And in the gruesome close of this dreadful day, the desperate and perplexed man stole timidly down the stairways—avoiding the elevator—and across the street to the place of the occultist.
IV
AN ADVENTURE IN BENARES
The silly world shrieks madly after Fact,
Thinking, forsooth, to find therein the Truth;
But we, my love, will leave our brains unracked,
And glean our learning from these dreams of youth:
Should any charge us with a childish act
And bid us track out knowledge like a sleuth,
We'll lightly laugh to scorn the wraiths of History,
And, hand in hand, seek certitude in Mystery.
—When the Halcyon Broods.
The house of the occultist was one of a long row, all alike, which reminds the observer of an exercise in perspective, as one glances down the stretch of balustraded piazzas. Amidon walked straight across the street from the hotel, and counted the flights of stairs up to the fourth floor. There was no elevator. The denizens of the place gave him a vague impression of being engaged in the fine arts. A glimpse of an interior hung with Navajo blankets, Pueblo pottery, Dakota beadwork, and barbaric arms; the sound of a soprano practising Marchesi exercises; an easel seen through an open door and flanked by a Grand Rapids folding-bed with a plaster bust atop; and a pervasive scent of cigarettes, accounted for, and may or may not have justified, the impression. On the fourth floor the scent shaded off toward sandalwood, the sounds toward silence, Bohemia toward Benares. He walked in twilight, on inch-deep nap, to a door on which glowed in soft, purple, self-emitted radiance, the words:
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