“Very fine chains are much alike,” I managed
to say. “For all I know, this may be mine,
but I don’t know how it got into that sealskin
bag. I never saw the bag until this morning after
daylight.”
“He admits that he had the bag,” somebody
said behind me. “How did you guess that
he wore glasses, anyhow?” to the amateur sleuth.
That gentleman cleared his throat. “There
were two reasons,” he said, “for suspecting
it. When you see a man with the lines of his
face drooping, a healthy individual with a pensive
eye,—suspect astigmatism. Besides,
this gentleman has a pronounced line across the bridge
of his nose and a mark on his ear from the chain.”
After this remarkable exhibition of the theoretical
as combined with the practical, he sank into a seat
near-by, and still holding the chain, sat with closed
eyes and pursed lips. It was evident to all
the car that the solution of the mystery was a question
of moments. Once he bent forward eagerly and
putting the chain on the window-sill, proceeded to
go over it with a pocket magnifying glass, only to
shake his head in disappointment. All the people
around shook their heads too, although they had not
the slightest idea what it was about.
The pounding in my ears began again. The group
around me seemed to be suddenly motionless in the
very act of moving, as if a hypnotist had called “Rigid!”
The girl in blue was looking at me, and above the
din I thought she said she must speak to me—something
vital. The pounding grew louder and merged into
a scream. With a grinding and splintering the
car rose under my feet. Then it fell away into
darkness.
THE SECOND SECTION
Have you ever been picked up out of your three-meals-a-day
life, whirled around in a tornado of events, and landed
in a situation so grotesque and yet so horrible that
you laugh even while you are groaning, and straining
at its hopelessness? McKnight says that is hysteria,
and that no man worthy of the name ever admits to it.
Also, as McKnight says, it sounds like a tank drama.
Just as the revolving saw is about to cut the hero
into stove lengths, the second villain blows up the
sawmill. The hero goes up through the roof and
alights on the bank of a stream at the feet of his
lady love, who is making daisy chains.
Nevertheless, when I was safely home again, with Mrs.
Klopton brewing strange drinks that came in paper
packets from the pharmacy, and that smelled to heaven,
I remember staggering to the door and closing it,
and then going back to bed and howling out the absurdity
and the madness of the whole thing. And while
I laughed my very soul was sick, for the girl was
gone by that time, and I knew by all the loyalty that
answers between men for honor that I would have to
put her out of my mind.
And yet, all the night that followed, filled as it
was with the shrieking demons of pain, I saw her as
I had seen her last, in the queer hat with green ribbons.
I told the doctor this, guardedly, the next morning,
and he said it was the morphia, and that I was lucky
not to have seen a row of devils with green tails.
