The Man Who Couldn't Sleep

  CHAPTER X

  THE THUMB-TAP CLUE

  I was being followed. Of that there was no longer a shadow of doubt.Move by move and turn by turn, for even longer than I had been openlyaware of it, some one had been quietly shadowing me.

  Now, if one thing more than another stirs the blood of the man who hasoccasion to walk by night, it is the discovery that his steps are beingdogged. The thought of being watched, of having a possible enemybehind one, wakens a thrill that is ancestral.

  So, instead of continuing my busily aimless circuit about thathigh-spiked iron fence which encloses Gramercy Park, I shot off at atangent, continuing from its northwest corner in a straight line towardFourth Avenue and Broadway.

  I had thought myself alone in that midnight abode of quietness. Onlythe dread of a second sleepless night had kept me there, goading me onin my febrile revolutions until weariness should send me stumbling offmy circuit like a six-day rider off his wheel.

  Once I was in the house-shadows where Twenty-first Street again beginsI swung about and waited. I stood there, in a sort of quietbelligerency, watching the figure of the man who had been dogging mysteps. I saw him turn southward in the square, as though my flightwere a matter of indifference to him. Yet the sudden relieving thoughtthat his movements might have been as aimless as my own was swallowedup by a second and more interesting discovery.

  It was the discovery that the man whom I had accepted as following mewas in turn being followed by yet another man.

  I waited until this strange pair had made a full circuit of theiron-fenced enclosure. Then I turned back into the square, walkingsouthward until I came opposite my own house door. The second man musthave seen me as I did so. Apparently suspicious of possible espionage,he loitered with assumed carelessness at the park's southern corner.The first man, the slighter and younger-looking figure of the two, kepton his unheeding way, as though he were the ghost-like competitor insome endless nightmare of a Marathon.

  My contemplation of him was interrupted by the advent of a fourthfigure, a figure which seemed to bring something sane and reassuring toa situation that was momentarily growing more ridiculous. For thenewcomer was McCooey, the patrolman. He swung around to me withoutspeaking, like a ferry swinging into its slip. Then he stood lookingimpassively up at the impassive November stars.

  "Yuh're out late," he finally commented, with that careless ponderositywhich is the step-child of unquestioned authority.

  "McCooey," I said, "there's a night prowler going around this park ofyours. He's doing it for about the one hundred and tenth time. And Iwish you'd find out what in heaven he means by it."

  "Been disturbin' yuh?" casually asked the law incarnate. Yet he putthe question as an indulgent physician might to a patient. McCooey wasof that type which it is both a joy and a temptation to mystify.

  "He's assaulted my curiosity," I solemnly complained.

  "D' yuh mean he's been interferin' wid yuh?" demanded my literal friend.

  "I mean he's invaded my peace of mind."

  "Then I'll see what he's afther," was the other's answer. And a momentlater he was swinging negligently out across the pavement at a linewhich would converge with the path of the nervously pacing stranger. Icould see the two round the corner almost together. I could seeMcCooey draw nearer and nearer. I could even see that he had turnedand spoken to the night walker as they went down the square togetherpast the lights of the Players.

  I could see that this night-walker showed neither resentment nor alarmat being so accosted. And I could also see that the meeting of the twowas a source of much mystification to the third man, the man who stillkept a discreet watch from the street corner on my right.

  McCooey swung back to where I stood. He swung back resentfully, like aretriever who had been sent on a blind trail.

  "What's he after, anyway?" I irritably inquired.

  "He says he's afther sleep!"

  "After what?" I demanded.

  McCooey blinked up at a sky suddenly reddened by an East Rivergas-flare. Then he took a deep and disinterested breath.

  "He says he's afther sleep," repeated the patrolman. "Unless he getsher, says he, he's goin to walk into the East River."

  "What's the matter with the man, anyway?" I asked, for that confessionhad brought the pacing stranger into something very close and kindredto me.

  "'Tis nothin' much," was the big man's answer. "Like as not he's beenover-eatin' and havin' a bad night or two."

  And with that my friend the patrolman, turning on his heel, pursued hisway through the quiet canyons of the streets where a thousand happysleepers knew nothing of his coming and saw nothing of his going.

  I stood there, looking after him as he went. Then I crossed to thenorthwest corner of that iron-fenced enclosure and waited for thatyouth whom the arm of wakefulness was swinging about like a stone in asling.

  I deliberately blocked his way as he tried to edge irritably about me.

  "Pardon me," I began. He looked up, like a somnambulist suddenlyawakened. "Pardon me, but I think I ought to warn you that you arebeing followed."

  "Am I?"

  "Yes; and I think you ought to know it."

  "Oh, I know it," was his apathetic response. "I'm even beginning toget used to it."

  He stepped back and leaned against the iron fence. His face, under thestreet-lamps, was a very unhappy looking one. It carried a woebegoneimpassivity, the impassivity which implied he was so submerged inmisery that no further blow could be of consequence to him. And yet,beyond the fixed pallor of that face there was something appealing,some trace of finer things, some touch which told me that he and thenocturnal underworld had nothing in common.

  "But are you getting used to the other thing?" I asked.

  "What other thing?" was his slow inquiry. I could see the twin firesof some dull fever burning in the depths of his cavernous eyes.

  "Going without sleep," I answered. For the second time he stared at me.

  "But I'm going to sleep," he answered. "I've got to!"

  "We all have to," I platitudinously remarked. "But there are timeswhen we all don't."

  He laughed a curious little mirthless laugh.

  "Are you ever troubled that way?" he asked.

  We stood there facing each other, like two kindred ghosts communingamid the quietness of a catacomb. Then I laughed, but not so bitterly,I hope, as he had done.

  "I've walked this square," I told him, "a thousand times to your one."

  "I've been doing it here for the last three hours," he quietlyconfessed.

  "And it's done you up," I rejoined. "And what we both need is a quietsmoke and an hour or two with our feet up on something?"

  "That's very good of you," he had the grace to admit, as his gazefollowed mine toward the house door. "But there are a number of thingsI've got to think out."

  He was a decent sort. There was no doubt of that. But it was equallyplain that he was in a bad way about something or other.

  "Let's think it out together!" I had the boldness to suggest.

  He laughed mirthlessly, though he was already moving southward alongthe square with me as he began to speak again.

  "There is something I've got to think out alone," he told me. Hespoke, this time without resentment, and I was glad of it. Thatunhappy-eyed youth had in some way got a grip, if not on my affection,at least on my interest. And in our infirmity we had a bond ofsympathy. We were like two refugees pursued by the same bloodhoundsand seeking the same trails of escape. I felt that I was violating noprinciple of reticence in taking him by the arm.

  "But why can't you slip in to my digs," I suggested, "for a smoke and adrop of Bristol Milk?"

  I was actually wheedling and coaxing him, as a stubborn child is coaxed.

  "Milk!" he murmured. "I never drink milk."

  "But, my dear man, Bristol Milk isn't the kind that comes from cows.It's seventy-year old sherry that's been sent on a sea-voyage toAustralia and back. It
's something that's oil to the throat and musicto the senses!"

  He looked at me as though the whole width of a Hudson River flowedbetween us.

  "That sounds appealing," he acknowledged. "But I'm in a mess that evenBristol Milk won't wash me out of."

  "Well, if it's that bad, it's worth forgetting for an hour or two!" Iannounced. He laughed again, relaxingly. I took a firmer and morefraternal grip on his arm.

  And side by side we went up the steps and through the door into thequietness of that sober-fronted house which I still called by the emptyname of home.

  In five minutes I had a hickory log ablaze in the fireplace, thelibrary-chairs drawn up, and Criswell, my captive, with his hat andcoat off. At his side stood a plate of biscuits and a glass of BristolMilk. But he seemed to find more consolation in sitting back andpeering at the play of the flames. His face was a very tired one. Theskin was clammy and dead-looking; and yet from the depths of thatfatigue flared the familiar ironic white lights of wakefulness. Ithink I knew about how he felt.

  We sat there without speaking, yet not unconscious of a silentcommunion of thought. I knew, however, that Bristol Milk was not inthe habit of leaving a man long tongued-tied. So I turned to refillhis glass. I had noticed that his hands were shaky, just as I hadnoticed the telltale twitch to one of his eyelids. But when hisuncontrolled fingers accidently knocked the glass from the edge of thetable, it gave me a bit of a start.

  He sat there looking studiously down at the scattered pieces of crystal.

  "It's hell!" he suddenly burst out.

  "What is?" I inquired.

  "Being in this sort of shape!" was his vehement response. I did notpermit myself to look at him. Sympathy was not the sort of thing heneeded. Seventy-year-old sherry, I felt, was more to the purpose.

  "Especially when we haven't any excuse for it," I lazily commented,passing him a second glass, filling it, and turning to watch the fire.

  "Warming stuff, that Bristol Milk," he said with a catch of the breaththat was too short to be called a sigh. Then, laughing and wiping thesweat from his forehead, he went on with an incoherence that approachedthat of childhood.

  "I've _got an excuse_."

  I waited for a moment or two.

  "What is it?"

  "That man you saw trailing me around the square, for one thing."

  "Even that isn't altogether an excuse," I maintained.

  "But it's what he stands for," protested my visitor. He sat staringinto the fire for a minute or two. I sat beside him, again consciousof some inarticulate and evasive companionship.

  "How did it begin?" I finally asked.

  He took a deep breath. Then he closed his eyes. And when he spoke hedid so without opening them.

  "I don't think I could explain," was his listless answer.

  "Make a try at it," I urged. "Let's ventilate the thing, canalize it.Let's throw a little light and order into it."

  He moved his head up and down, slowly, as though he had some vaguecomprehension of the psychology of confession, some knowledge of theadvantages of "exteriorating" secret offenses. Then he sat very stilland tense.

  "But there's no way of ventilating this. There's no way of knocking awindow in it. It's--it's only a blank wall."

  "Why a blank wall?" I inquired.

  He turned and looked past me, with unseeing eyes.

  "_Because I can't remember_," he said in a voice which made it seemthat he was speaking more to himself than to me. He looked about him,with a helplessness that was pitiful. "I can't remember!" he repeated,with the forlornness of a frightened child.

  "That's exactly what I wanted to get at," I cried, with a pretense atconfident and careless intimacy. "So let's clear away in front of theblank wall. Let's at least try a kick or two at it."

  "It's no use," he complained.

  "Well, let's try," I persisted, with forced cheerfulness. "Let's getat the beginning of things."

  "How far back do you want me to go?" he finally asked. He spoke withthe weary listlessness of a patient confronted by an unwelcomepractitioner.

  "Let's begin right at the first," I blithely suggested.

  He sat looking at his shaking fingers for a moment or two.

  "There's really nothing much to begin at," he tried to explain. "Thesethings don't seem to begin in a minute, or an hour, or a day."

  "Of course not," I assented as I waited for him to go on.

  "The thing I noticed at the time, about the only thing I even thoughtof, was that my memory seemed to have a blind spot--a blind spot thesame as an eye has."

  "Ill?" I asked. "Or overworking?"

  "I guess I'd been pounding away pretty hard. I know I had. You see, Iwanted to make good in that office. So I must have been biting offmore than I could chew."

  "What office?" I asked as he came to a stop. He looked up at me with astare of dazed perplexity.

  "Didn't I tell you that?" he asked, massaging his frontal bone with theends of his unsteady fingers. "Why, I mean John Lockwood's office."

  "John Lockwood?" I repeated, with a sudden tightening of the nerves."Do you mean the railway-investment man, the man who made so manymillions up along the northwest coast?"

  The youth in the chair nodded. And I made an effort to control myfeelings, for John Lockwood, I knew only too well, was the father ofMary Lockwood. He, like myself, had exploited the Frozen North, buthad exploited it in a manner very different from mine.

  "Go on," I said, after quite a long pause.

  "Lockwood brought me down from the Canadian Northern offices inWinnipeg. He said he'd give me a chance in the East--the chance of mylife."

  "What were you in his office?"

  "I suppose you'd call it private secretary. But I don't think he knewwhat I was himself."

  "And he let you overwork yourself?"

  "No, I can't say that. It wasn't his fault. You see, his work thissummer kept him out at the coast a good deal of the time. He had anEnglish mining engineer named Carlton looking over some BritishColumbia interests."

  "And you carried on the office work while Lockwood was out west?"

  "I did what I could to keep my end of the thing going. But, you see,it was all so new to me. I hadn't got deep enough into the work toorganize it the way I wanted to. There were a lot of little thingsthat _couldn't_ be organized."

  "Why not?"

  "Well, this man Carlton, for instance, had Lockwood's office look afterhis English mail. All his letters had to be sent on to whatever pointhe reported from."

  "Well?"

  "When Lockwood was away from the office he deputized me to look afterhis mail, sign for the registered letters, re-direct telegrams, seethat everything went through to the right point. It was quite a heavymail. Carlton, I guess, was a man of importance, and besides that hewas investing for friends at home. Looking after it, of course, wassimple enough, but--"

  "Wait!" I interrupted. "Has this mail anything to do with our blankwall?"

  He looked about at me as though he had seen me for the first time, asthough all that while he had been merely thinking aloud.

  "Why that is the blank wall," he cried.

  "How?" I demanded.

  "Four weeks ago Lockwood came back from the West. On the same day aregistered letter came to the office for young Carlton. That letterheld twelve Bank of England notes for a hundred pounds each. About sixthousand dollars altogether."

  "Where did it come from?"

  "From Montreal, from Carlton's own father. He wanted the moneyforwarded to his son. The older man was on his way back to England.The younger Carlton was looking up certain lands his father wanted toinvest in. Young Carlton's movements were rather uncertain, so hisfather made sure by sending the letter to our office--to Lockwood'soffice."

  "And you were still acting as _poste restante_ for the Carlton out inBritish Columbia?"

  "Yes, we'd been receiving and forwarding his mail."

  "And?"

  "
We also received this registered letter from Montreal. That's wherethe blank wall comes in."

  "How?"

  "We've no record of that letter ever going out of our office."

  He looked at me as though he expected me to be more electrified than Ifound it possible to be.

  "Lost, stolen, or strayed?" I asked.

  "That's what I'd give my eye-teeth to know," he solemnly asserted.

  "But where do _you_ come in?"

  His answer was given without the slightest shade of emotion.

  "I signed for the letter."

  "Then you remember that much?"

  "No, I don't remember it. But when they began to investigate throughthe post-office, I knew my own signature when I saw it."

  "With no chance of mistake, or forgery?"

  "It was my own signature."

  "And you don't even remember getting the letter?"

  "I've gone back over that day with draghooks. I've thought over it allnight at a stretch, but I can't get one clear idea of what I did."

  The force of the situation was at last coming home to me.

  "And they're holding you responsible for the disappearance of thatletter?"

  "Good God, I'm holding myself responsible for it! It's been hangingover me for nearly a month. And I can't stand much more of it!"

  "Then let's go back to possibilities. Have you ever checked them over?"

  "I've gone over 'em like a scrutineer over a voter's list. I've tested'em all, one by one; but they all end up at the blank wall."

  "Well, before we go back to these possibilities again, how about thepersonal equation? Have you any feeling, any emotional bias, any oneinclination about the thing, no matter how ridiculous it may seem?"

  He closed his eyes, and appeared to be deep in thought.

  "I've always felt one thing," he confessed, "I've always felt--mindyou, I only say felt--that when I signed for that Carlton letter, Icarried it into Lockwood's own room with his own personal mail, andeither gave it to him or left it on his desk."

  "What makes you feel that?"

  "In the first place, I must have known he'd seen Carlton recently, andhad a clearer idea of his address at the time, than I had. In thesecond place, being registered, it must have impressed me as beingcomparatively important."

  "And Lockwood himself?"

  "He says I'm mistaken. He holds I never gave him the letter, or hewould have remembered it."

  "And circumstances seem to back him up in this?"

  "Everything backs him up," was the answer.

  "Then let's go back to the possibilities. How about theft? Are yousure every one in the office was reliable?"

  "Every one but _me_!" was his bitter retort.

  "Then how about its being actually lost inside those four walls?"

  "That's scarcely possible. I've gone through every nook and drawer andfile. I've gone over the place with a fine-tooth comb, time and timeagain. I've even gone over my own flat, every pocket and every cornerof every room."

  "Then you have a home?" I asked.

  Again there was the telltale neurasthenic delay before his answer came.

  "I was married the same week the letter was lost," was his response.

  "And your wife hasn't been able to help you remember?"

  "She didn't know of it until a week ago. Then she saw I couldn'tsleep, and kept forgetting things, trifling little things that showed Iwasn't coordinating properly--such as letting a letter go out unsignedor getting muddled on the safe combination or not remembering whetherI'd eaten or not. She said she thought I was in for typhoid orsomething like that. She went right down to Lockwood and practicallyaccused him of making me overwork. Lockwood had to tell her what hadhappened. I suppose it was the way it was thrown at her, all in aheap! She went home to her own people that afternoon, without seeingme. I thought it over, and decided there was no use doing anythinguntil--until the mess was cleared up some way or other."

  I did not speak for several seconds. The case was not as simple as ithad seemed.

  "And Lockwood, how does he feel about it?" I finally asked.

  "The way any man'd feel!" The acidulated smile that wrinkled his facewas significant. "He's having me shadowed!"

  "But he _does_ nothing!"

  "He keeps giving me more time."

  "Well, doesn't that imply he still somehow believes in you?"

  "He doesn't believe in me," was the slow response.

  "Then why doesn't he do something? Why doesn't he act?"

  There was a moment's silence. "Because he promised his daughter togive me another week."

  Still again I experienced that odd tightening of the nerves. And I hadto take a grip on myself, before I could continue.

  "You mean Mary Lockwood personally interested herself in your case?"

  "Yes."

  That would be like Mary Lockwood, I remembered. She would always wantto be something more than just; she would want to be merciful--withothers. _I_ was the only one guilty of an offense which could not beoverlooked!

  "But why Mary Lockwood?" I asked, for something to say.

  "She seemed to think I ought to be given a chance." Criswell spokewith listless heaviness, as though Mary Lockwood's pity, as though anyone's pity, were a thing of repugnance to him.

  "A matter of thumbs down," I murmured. He looked at me blankly; theidiom had not reached his intelligence. I crossed to the table andpoured him out another glass of Bristol Milk.

  "You say you did things to show you weren't coordinating properly," Iwent on. "Now, going back to possibilities, mightn't there have been atouch of aphasia? Mightn't you have done something with that letterand had no memory of what it was?"

  "It's not aphasia--it never was that," calmly retorted the unhappy-eyedyoung man. "You couldn't dignify it with a name like that. And itnever amounted to anything serious. I carried on all my office workwithout a hitch, without one mistake. But, as I told you before, I wasworking under pressure, and I hadn't been sleeping well. I did thebigger things without a mistake, but I often found I was doing themautomatically."

  "Then let's go back once more to those possibilities. Could the letterhave been misdirected, absent-mindedly? Could it have gone to one ofCarlton's addresses?"

  "Every address has been canvassed. The thing's been verified throughthe local post-office, and through the Montreal office. That part ofit's as clear as daylight. A letter came to this office of Lockwood'saddressed to Carlton. It held six thousand dollars in cash. Ireceived it and signed for it. The man to whom it was addressed neverreceived it. Neither the money nor the letter was ever seen again.And the last record of it ends with _me_. Is it any wonder they've gotthat gum-shoe man trailing me about every move I make?"

  "Wait," I cried, still conjecturing along the field of possibilities."Why mightn't that letter have come in a second envelope which youremoved after its receipt? Why mightn't it have come addressed toLockwood or the firm?"

  "The post-office records show differently. It came to Carlton. Isigned for it as an agent of Carlton's. Oh, there's no use going overall that old ground. I've been over it until I thought I was goingcrazy. I've raked and dug through it, these past three weeks, andnothing's come of it. Nothing _can_ come of it, until Lockwood getstired of waiting for me to prove what I _can't_ prove!"

  "But, out of all the affair as it happened, out of that whole day whenthe letter came, isn't there one shred or tatter of memory on which youcan try to hang something? Isn't there one thing, no matter how smallor how misty, from which you can begin?"

  "Not one rational thing! I've tried to build a bridge out into thatempty space--that day always seems like empty space to me--I've triedto build it out like a cantilever, but I can't bolt two ideas together.I've tried to picture it; I've tried to visualize it; I've tried toimagine it as I must have lived it. But all I've left is the fool ideaof a man hitting his thumb."

  "What do you mean by that?" I demanded, sitting
up with a jolt.

  "I keep seeing somebody, somebody sitting in front of me, holding aletter in his right hand and tapping the thumb of his left hand with itas he talked."

  "But who is it? Or who was it?"

  "I've tried to imagine it was Lockwood."

  "Why, you've something right there!" I exultantly cried out. "That'svaluable. It's something definite, something concrete, somethingpersonal. Let's begin on that."

  "It's no use," remarked my companion. His voice, as he spoke, was oneof weary unconcern. "I thought the way you do, at first. I felt sureit would lead to something. I kept watching Lockwood, trying to catchhim at the trick."

  "And?" I prompted.

  "I had no chance of making sure. So I went up to his home, and askedfor Miss Lockwood herself. I tried to explain how much the whole thingmeant to me. I asked her if she's ever noticed her father in the actof tapping his thumbs."

  "And had she?"

  "She was very patient. She thought it over, and tried to remember, butshe decided that I was mistaken. His own daughter, she explained,would have noticed any such mannerism as that. In fact, she venturedto mention the matter to her father. And when John Lockwood found I'dbeen up to his house, that way, he--well, he rather lost his temperabout it all. He accused me of trying to play on his daughter'ssympathy, of trying to hide behind a petticoat. Miss Lockwood herselfcame and saw me again, though, and was fine enough to say that shestill believed in me, that she still had faith in me. She said I couldalways count on her help. But everything she did only seemed to pushme further back into the dark, the dark that's worse than hell to me!"

  He leaned far forward in the chair, covering his face with his unsteadyhands. I had no help to give him.

  But as I sat there staring at him I began to see what he had gonethrough. Yet more disturbing than the consciousness of this was thethought of what it would eventually lead to, of what it was alreadyleading to, in that broken wreck of a walking ghost, in thatterror-hounded neurasthenic who had found a hole in his memory and hadkept exploring it, feeling about it as one's tongue-tip keeps fathomingthe cave of a lost tooth.

  "I went to a doctor, after she left me," the man in the chair wassaying through his gaunt fingers as their tips pressed against his eyesockets. "He told me I had to sleep. He gave me trional and bromidesand things, but I didn't seem able to assimilate them. Then he told meit was all in my own mind, that I only had to let myself relax. Hetold me to lie with my hands down at my sides, and sigh, to sigh justonce. I lay all night as though I was in a coffin waiting for thatsigh, fighting for it, praying for it. But it didn't come."

  "Of course it didn't," I told him, for I knew the feeling. "It neverdoes, that way. You ought to have taken a couple of weeks in the Mainewoods, or tried fishing up in Temagami, or gone off pounding a golfball fifteen miles a day."

  Then I stopped and looked at him, for some subsidiary part of my brainmust have been working even while I was talking.

  "By heaven, I believe that girl was mistaken!"

  "Mistaken?" he asked.

  "Yes, I don't believe any girl really knows her father's little tricks.I'd like to wager that Lockwood has the habit of tapping his thumbnail, sometimes, with what he may be holding in his other hand!"

  My dispirited friend looked up at me, a little disturbed by thevehemence of my outburst.

  "But what's that to me now? What good does it do me, even though hedoes tap his thumb?"

  "Can't you see that this is exploration work, like digging up a lostcity? Can't you see that we've got to get down to at least one stone,and follow where that first sign leads?"

  I did my best to infect him with some trace of my sudden enthusiasm. Iwanted to emotionalize him out of that dead flat monotone ofindifference. I jumped to my feet and brought a declamative hand downon the corner of my library table.

  "I tell you it does you a lot of good. It's your life-buoy. It's thething that's got to keep you afloat until your feet are on solid groundagain."

  "I tried to feel that way about it once," was his listless response."But it doesn't lead to anything. It only makes me decide I dreamedthe whole thing."

  I stared down at him as he leaned wearily back in the heavy chair.

  "Look here," I said. "I know you're pretty well done up. I knowyou're sick and tired of the whole hopeless situation, that you'vegiven up trying to think about it. But I want you to act this thingout for me to-night. I want to try to dramatize that situation down inLockwood's office when you signed for the Carlton letter. I want youto do everything you can to visualize that moment. I want you to getthat cantilever bridge stuck out across the gulf, across the gulf fromeach side, until you touch the middle and give us a chance to bolt 'emtogether."

  I pushed back the chairs, cleared the space on the reading-table, swungthe youth about so that he faced this table, and then took one of myown letters from the heavy brass stand beside him. My one object nowwas to make him "go Berserk."

  "This is your room," I told him. "And this is your desk. Remember,you're in your office, hard at work. Be so good, please, as to keepbusy."

  I crossed the room to the door as I spoke, intent on my impersonation.But I could hear him as he laughed his indulgent and mirthless laugh.

  "Now, I'm bringing you this mail matter. And here I have a registeredletter addressed to one Carlton. You see it, there? This letter?It's for Carlton, remember. I want you to take it. And sign for it,here. Yes, write down your name--actually write it. Now take theletter. And now think, man, _think_. What do you do after that? Whatis the next thing? What do you feel is the right thing? The onlything?"

  He looked up at me, wonderingly. Then he looked about the room. Thenhe slowly shook his bead from side to side. I had not succeeded incommunicating to him any jot of my own mental energy.

  "I can't do it," he said, "I can't remember. It doesn't seem tosuggest a thing."

  "But think, man, think!" I cried out at him. "Use your imagination!Get into the part! Act it! The thing's there in your head, I tellyou. It's shut up somewhere there, only you haven't hit the rightcombination to throw the door open. You can't do a thing in this life,you've never lived an active moment of this life, without a record ofit being left there. It may be buried, it may be buried so deep you'lldie without digging it up, but it's there, I tell you, if you only goafter it!"

  "If I was only sure it was there," hesitated the man at the table. "IfI only knew just what direction to go! But this doesn't mean anything;it doesn't _get_ me anywhere."

  "You're not in the part," I cried, with what was almost an ecstasy ofimpatience. "What you've got to do is live, over that day. If youcan't do that you've got to _live over_ at least one part of it. No;don't think this is all foolishness. It's only going back to a veryold law of association. I'm only trying to do something to bring upsight, touch, sound. We both know those are things that act quickestin reviving memory. Can't you see--out of similar conditions I want tocatch at something that will suggest the similar action! There's noneed telling you that my mind and your mind each has a permanentdisposition to do again what it has once done under the samecircumstances. There's no use delving into psychology. It's all suchordinary every-day common sense."

  He sat looking at me a little blankly as I pounded this out at him.His pallid face, twitching in the light from the fire, was studious,but only passively so. The infection of my rhapsodic effort had notreached him. I knew that, even before he spoke.

  "I can see what you're aiming at," he explained. "But no matter howhard I think, I can't get beyond the blank wall. I'm still in thislibrary of yours. And this is still a table and nothing likeLockwood's office desk."

  "And that makes it seem rather silly to you?"

  "Yes, it _does_ seem silly," he acknowledged.

  Then a sudden idea fell like a hailstone out of the heavens themselves.

  "I know what's the matter," I cried. "I know why you're not acting outt
he part. It's because you're not on the right stage. You know it'san empty rehearsal--you haven't been able to let yourself go!"

  "I'm sorry," he said, with the contrition of a child, and with hisrepeated hand-gesture of helplessness.

  I swung about on him, scarcely hearing the words he was uttering.

  "We've got to get into that office," I declared. "We've got to getinto Lockwood's own office."

  He shook his head, without looking up at me.

  "I've been over that office, every nook and cranny of it!" hereiterated.

  "But what I want to know is, _can_ we get into it?"

  "At this time of night?" he asked, apparently a little frightened atthe mere idea of it.

  "Yes, now," I declared.

  "I'd rather not," he finally averred.

  "But you still carry those office-keys, don't you?" I asked.

  "Yes; I still have my keys. But it wouldn't look right, the way thingsare. It would be only too easy for them to misinterpret a midnightvisit of mine to those offices. And they're watching me, every move Imake."

  "Then let them know you're going to make the move," I maintained. "Andthen we'll slip down in my car, with no chance of being followed."

  He seemed to be turning the matter over in his mind. Then he lookedup, as though a sudden light had clarified the whole situation.

  "You know Mary Lockwood, don't you?" he demanded.

  "Y-yes," I hesitatingly admitted.

  "Then wouldn't it be easier for you to call her up on the telephone andexplain just what you propose doing?"

  It was my turn to sit in a brown study. It would be no easy matter, Iremembered, to make clear to this stranger my reasons for not caring toconverse with Mary Lockwood. I also remembered that the situationconfronting me was something which should transcend mere personalissues. And I was in a quandary, until I thought of theever-dependable Benson.

  "I'll have my man call up Lockwood's house," I explained as I rose tomy feet, "and announce that we're making an informal visit to thoseoffices."

  "But what's that visit for?"

  "For the purpose of finding out if John Lockwood really taps his thumbsor not!"

  The gray-faced youth stared at me.

  "But what good will that do?" he demanded.

  "Why, it'll give us the right stage-setting, the right'props'--something to reach out and grope along. It'll mean the sameto your imagination as a brick wall to a bit of ivy." And I stoppedand turned to give my instructions to Benson.

  "Oh, it's no earthly use!" repeated the man who couldn't remember, inhis flat and atonic voice. But instead of answering or arguing withhim I put his hat in his hand and held the portiere, waiting for him topass through.

  I have often thought that if the decorous and somewhat ponderous figureof Mr. John Lockwood had invaded his own offices on that particularnight, he would have been persuaded of the fact that he was confrontingtwo madmen.

  For, once we had gained access to those offices and locked the doorbehind us, I began over again what I had so inadequately attempted inmy own library.

  During the earlier part of my effort to Belascoize a slumbering mentalidea into some approximation to life, I tried to remember mysurroundings and the fact that the hour was the unseemly one of almosttwo o'clock in the morning. But as I seated Criswell at his own officedesk and did my utmost to galvanize his tired brain into some semblanceof the role I had laid out for it, I think he rather lost track of timeand place. At the end of ten minutes my face was moist with sweat, anda wave of utter exhaustion swept through me as I saw that, after all mystruggle, nothing in that minutely enacted little drama had struck aresponsive chord in either his imagination or his memory.

  "You don't get anything?" I asked as I dropped back into a chair at theend of my pantomime. No stage-manager, trying to project hispersonality into an unresponding actor, could have struggled morepassionately, more persuasively, more solicitously. But it had beenfruitless.

  "No, I can't get anything!" said the white-faced Criswell. And I couldsee that he had honestly tried, that he had strained his very soul,striving to reach up to the light that was denied him. But the matterwas not one of mere volition. It was beyond his power. It depended onsomething external, on something as much outside his conscious controlas though it were an angel that must come and touch him on the brow.It was simply that the door of Memory remained locked and barred. Wehad not hit upon the right combination. But I did not give up.

  "Now we're going in to try Lockwood's own office," I told him, with aperemptoriness which made him draw away from me.

  "I--I don't think I can go through it again," he faltered. And I couldsee the lines of mental fatigue deepen on his ashen face.

  Yet I proffered him no sympathy; I allowed him no escape from thosefour imprisoning walls. I had already stirred the pool too deeply. Iknew that a relapse into the old impassive hopelessness would now bedoubly perilous.

  I looked about the room. Three sides of it were lined withbook-shelves and every shelf was filled with hundreds of books,thousands of them altogether, from dull and uninteresting-lookingtreatises on railway building and mining engineering to even moredull-looking consular reports and text-books on matters of finance.The fourth side of the room held two windows. Between these windows,some six feet from the wall, stood Lockwood's rosewood desk. It was ahandsome desk, heavily carved, yet like the rest of the furniture, theacme of simplicity. History, I knew, had been made over that oblong ofrosewood. It had been and would again be an arena of Napoleoniccontention. Yet it stood before me as bare and bald as a prizefighter's platform.

  I sat down in the carved swivel chair beside this desk, drew my chaircloser to the rosewood, and looked up at Criswell, who, I believe,would have turned and bolted, had he been given the chance. He was, Ifancy, even beginning to have suspicions as to my sanity. But in thatI saw no objection. It was, I felt, rather an advantage. It wouldserve to key his nerves up to a still higher pitch--for I still hopedagainst hope that I might lash him into some form of mental calenturewhich would drive him into taking the high jump, which would in someway make him clear the blind wall.

  "Now, I'm Lockwood, remember," I cried, fixing my eye on him, "andyou're Criswell, my private secretary. Have you got that plain?"

  He did not answer me. He was, apparently, looking weakly about for aplace to sit down.

  "Have you got that plain?" I repeated, this time in a voice that wasalmost thunderous.

  "Yes," he finally said. "I understand."

  "Then go back into your room there. From that room I want you to bringme a letter. Not any old letter, but one particular letter. I wantyou to bring me the Carlton registered letter which you signed for. Iwant you to see it, and feel it, and bring it here."

  I threw all the authority of my being into that command. I had tojustify both my course and my intelligence. I had to get my man overthe high jump, or crawl away humiliated and defeated.

  I stared at the man, for he was not moving. I tried to cow him intoobedience by the very anger of my look. But it didn't seem to succeed.

  "Don't you understand," I cried. "I want you to bring that registeredletter in to me, here, now!"

  He looked at me a little blankly. Then he passed his hand over hismoist forehead.

  "But we tried that before," he falteringly complained. "We tried that,and it wouldn't work. I brought the letter in the first time, and youweren't here."

  I sat up as though I had been shot. I could feel a tingle of somethinggo up and down my backbone. My God, I thought, the man's actuallystumbling on something. The darkness was delivering itself of an idea.

  "Yes, we tried that before," I wheedled. "And what happened?"

  "You weren't here," he repeated, in tones of such languid detachmentthat one might have thought of him as under the influence of ahypnotist.

  "But I'm here now, so bring me the letter!"

  I tried to speak quietly, but I noticed that my voice s
hook withsuppressed excitement. Whether or not the contagion of my hysteriawent out to him I can not say. But he suddenly walked out of the room,with the utmost solemnity.

  The moment I was alone I did a thing that was both ridiculous andaudacious. Jerking open Lockwood's private drawer, I caught up aperfecto from a cigar-box I found there. This perfecto I impertinentlyand promptly lighted, puffing its aroma about, for it had suddenly comehome to me how powerful an aid to memory certain odors may be, how, forinstance, the mere smell of a Noah's Ark will carry a man forty yearsback to a childhood Christmas.

  I sat there busily and abstractedly smoking as Criswell came into theroom and quietly stepped up to my desk. In his hand he carried aletter. He was solemn enough about it, only his eyes, I noticed, wereas empty as though he were giving an exhibition of sleep-walking. Hereminded me of a hungry actor trying to look happy over a_papier-mache_ turkey.

  "Here's a letter for Carlton, sir," he said to me. "Had I better sendit on, or will you look after it?"

  I pretended to be preoccupied. Lockwood, I felt, would have been thatway, if the scene had indeed ever occurred. Lockwood's own mind musthave been busy, otherwise he would have carried away some definitememory of what had happened.

  I looked up, quickly and irritably. I took the letter from Criswell'shand, glanced at it, and began absently tapping my left thumb-tip withit as I peered at the secretarial figure before me.

  Criswell's face went blank as he saw the movement. It was now not evensomnambulistic in intelligence. It maddened me to think he was goingto fail me at such a critical moment.

  "What are you breaking down for?" I cried. "Why don't you go on?"

  He was silent, looking ahead of him.

  "I--_I see blue_," he finally said, as though to himself. His face wasclammy with sweat.

  "What sort of blue?" I prompted. "Blue cloth? Blue sky? Blue ink?Blue _what_?"

  "_It's blue_," he repeated, ignoring my interruption. And all his soulseemed writhing and twisting in some terrible travail of mentalchildbirth.

  "I see blue. And you're making it white. You're covering it up.You're turning over white--white--white! Oh, what in God's name is it?"

  My spine was again tingling with a thousand electric needles as Iwatched him. He turned to me with a gesture of piteous appeal.

  "What was it?" he implored. "Can't you help me get it--get it beforeit goes! What was it?"

  "It was blue, blue and white," I told him, and as I said it I realizedwhat madhouse jargon it would have sounded to any outsider.

  He sank into a chair, and let his head fall forward on his hands. Hedid not speak for several seconds.

  "And there are two hills covered with snow," he slowly intoned.

  My heart sank a little as I heard him. I knew I had overtaxed hisstrength. He was wandering off again into irrelevancies. He hadmissed the high jump.

  "That's all right, old man," I tried to console him. "There's no useoverdoing this. You sit there for a while and calm down."

  As I sank into a chair on the other side of the desk, defeated, staringwearily about that book-lined room that was housing so indeterminate atragedy, the door on my left was thrown open. Through it stepped awoman in an ivory-tinted dinner gown over which was thrown acloth-of-gold cloak.

  I sat there blinking up at her, for it was Mary Lockwood herself. Itwas not so much her sudden appearance as the words she spoke to thehuddled figure on the other side of the desk that startled me.

  "You were right," she said, with a self-obliterating intensity ofpurpose. "Father taps his thumbs. I saw him do it an hour ago!"

  I sat staring at her as she stood in the center of the room, a tower ofivory and gold against the dull and mottled colors of the book-linedwall. I waited for her to speak. Then out of the mottled colors thatconfronted my eye, out of the faded yellows and rusty browns, the dullgreens and brighter reds, and the gilt of countless titles, my gazerested on a near-by oblong of blue.

  I looked at it without quite seeing it. Then it came capriciously hometo me that blue had been the color that Criswell had mentioned.

  But after all blue is only blue, I vacuously told myself as I got upand crossed the room. Then I saw the white streak at the top of thebook, and for no adequate reason my heart suddenly leaped up into mythroat.

  I snatched at that thing of blue and white, like a man overboardsnatching at a life-line. I jerked it from its resting-place andcrossed to the desk-top with it.

  On its blue title page I read: "Report of the Commissioner of the NorthWest Mounted Police, 1898."

  The volume, I could see at a glance, was a Canadian Government BlueBook. It was a volume which I myself had exploited, in my own time,and for my own ends. But those ends, I remembered as I took up thebook and shook it, belonged now to a world that seemed very foolish andvery far-away. Then, having shaken the volume as a terrier shakes arat, I turned it over and looked through it. This I did with a slowlysinking heart.

  It held nothing of significance. Yet I took it up and shook it andriffled through its leaves once more, to make sure. Then between whatI saw to be the eighteenth and nineteenth pages of that section whichbore the title "The Report of Inspector Moodie," I came upon aphotographic insert, a tint-block photo-engraving. It carried theinscription: "The Summit of Laurier Pass Looking Westward." What mademe suddenly stop breathing was the fact that this photograph showed twohills covered with snow.

  "Criswell!" I called out, so sharply that it must have sounded like ascream to the bewildered woman in the cloth-of-gold cloak.

  "Yes," he answered in his far-away voice.

  "Was John Lockwood ever interested in Northern British Columbia? Didhe happen to have any claims or interests or plans that would make himlook up trails in a Police Patrol report?"

  "I don't know," was the wearily indifferent answer.

  "Think, man!" I called out at him. "_Think!_"

  "I can't think," he complained.

  "Wouldn't he have to look up roads to a new mining-camp in thatdistrict?" I persisted.

  "Yes, I think he did," was the slow response. Then the speaker lookedup at me. His stupor was almost that of intoxication. His wanderingeye peered unsteadily down at the Blue Book as I once more riffledthrough its pages, from back to front. I saw his wavering glance growsteady, his whole face change. I put the book down on the desk-top,with the picture of Laurier Pass uppermost under the flat white light.

  I saw the man's eyes gradually dilate, and his body rise, as thoughsome unseen hydraulic machinery were slowly and evenly elevating it.

  "Why, there's the blue! There's the white!" he gasped.

  "Go on!" I cried. "Go on!"

  "And those are the two hills covered with snow! That's it! I see it!I see it, now! That's the book John Lockwood was going through _when Ihanded him the letter_!"

  "What letter?" I insisted.

  "Carlton's letter," he proclaimed.

  "Then where is it?" I asked, sick at heart. I looked from Criswell tothe girl in the gold cloak as she crossed the room to the book-shelfand stooped over the space from which I had so feverishly snatched theBlue Book. I saw her brush the dust from her fingertips, stoop lower,and again reach in between the shelves. Then I looked back atCriswell, for I could hear his voice rise almost to a scream.

  "_I remember! I see it now! And he's got to remember! He's got toremember!_"

  I shook my head, hopelessly, as he flung himself down in the chair,sobbing out that foolish cry, over and over again.

  "Yes, he's got to remember," I could hear Mary Lockwood say as sheturned and faced us.

  "But what will make him?" I asked, as her studiously impersonal gazemet mine.

  "This will," she announced as she held out her hand. I saw then, forthe first time, that in this hand she was holding a heavily inscribedand R-stamped envelope.

  "What's that?" demanded Criswell, staring hard.

  "It's your lost letter," answered Mary Lockwood.
"How it fell out, Idon't know. But we do know, now, that father shut this letter up inthat book. And the Lockwoods, I'm afraid," she continued with an oddlittle quaver in her voice, "will have a very, very great deal to askyour forgiveness for. I'm sorry, Mr. Criswell, terribly sorry thisever happened. But I'm glad, terribly glad, that it has turned out theway it has."

  There was a moment of quite unbroken silence. Then Criswell turned tome.

  "It's _you_ I've got to thank for all this," he finally blustered out,with moist yet happy eyes, as he did his best to wring my hand off."It's you who've--who've reinstated me!"

  We were standing there in a sort of triangle, very awkward andill-at-ease, until I found the courage to break the silence.

  "But I don't seem to have been able to reinstate myself, Criswell," Isaid as I turned and met Mary Lockwood's level gaze. She looked at meout of those intrepid and unequivocating eyes of hers, for a full halfminute. Then she turned slowly away. She didn't speak. But there wassomething that looked strangely like unhappiness in her face as shegroped toward the door, which Criswell, I noticed, opened for her.