 5. In which solitude is unable to discover the charms which sages have seen in her face. The philosopher cursed gently, and then listened. The steps of his tormentors grew fainter as they reached the lower part of the house. Then he heard or thought he heard the distant crunching of boots on gravel. After that came a complete silence. It occurred to the ill-used gentleman that he was free. He pulled savagely at the loose cords, got one leg to move, and then the other, gradually unrolled the cord and attempted to stand. At first he could not. Nine hours of such confinement had numbed him. He felt also in acute pain, which luckily did not last long, where his circulation had been partially arrested at the ankles. In a few minutes he could stand up and walk. It was then that he began to observe his new surroundings. He found himself in a large and very high room with a steep-pitched roof, soaring and somber, quite twenty feet above him. The walls were bare of ornament, but still covered with a rich dark red paper, and darker cleaner patches which marked places where pictures had hung. On the height of the roof, looking north, was a large skylight which lit the whole apartment. There was a good writing table, with pigeonholes and two rows of drawers on either side. Upon this writing table stood a little kettle, a spirit stove, a bottle of methylated spirit, a tin of milk cocoa, three large loaves, a chicken, tinned meats, a box of biscuits, and what was not at all to be despised, an excellent piece of old stilted cheese. The thoughtful provider of these had even added a salt cellar full of salt. There stood also upon the floor beside these provisions a large stone jar, which upon unquarking and smelling it he discovered to contain sherry. The room had also a fireplace, with a fire laid, a full coal shuttle, an excellent armchair, a few books on a shelf, and that was all. The professor, having taken stock of these things, did the foolish thing that we should all do under the circumstances. He went to the big oak door, banged it, rattled it, kicked it, and abused it. It stood firm. The next thing he did was also a thing which any of us would have done, though it had more sense in it. He shouted at the top of his voice. He kept up that shouting in a number of incongruous forms in which the word help occurred with a frequency that would have been irritating to a hearer had there been one, but audience he had none. He knocked furiously at either wall of the long room. He turned at last exhausted and perceived with delight a low door which he had failed at first to notice. It was in the gloom of the far corner. He made for this door. To his delight it opened easily and revealed beyond it nothing but darkness. There were matches upon the mantelpiece he struck one and peered within. He saw a neat little bed, not made by expert women, rather he thought by these jailers of his, and through a farther door he saw what might be a bathroom fairly comfortably appointed. Such was Professor Higginson's prison. It might have been worse, and to the pure-in-heart prison can be no confinement for the soul. But either Professor Higginson's heart was not pure or something else was wrong with him. For when he had taken stock of his little luxuries he treated them to a long maldiction, the scope and elaboration of which would have surprised him in other days. Necessity, which is stronger than the gods, knows no law, and is also the mother of invention. She is fruitful in stirring the pontifical instinct, the soul of the builder, of the contriver in man. Necessity awoke that primal power in the starved Higginsonian soul, when the professor of subliminal consciousness had prowled round and round the room like a caged carnivorous thing some twenty times, seeking an outlet harboring disordered schemes, a clear idea suddenly lit up his cloudy mind. It was glass again. The scarlight was made of glass, and glass is a fragile thing. He stood with his hands in his trouser pockets looking up to that large, slanting window in the roof and taking stock. It was made to open, but the iron rod which raised and lured it had been disconnected and taken away. He thought he could perceive in certain small dots far above him the heads of screws recently driven in to secure the outer edge of the scarlight and make it fast. He estimated the height. Now your professor of subliminal consciousness in general is no dab at this, but that great governess of the gods, Necessity, to whom I have already paid eight well-merited compliments, threw him back in this matter also upon the primitive foundations of society, and the professor was astonished to find himself applying the most ancient of measures. He reckoned by his own height taken against the wall. He was a man of six feet. The lowest part of the window was about twice his own height from the floor, a matter of twelve feet. It summits another six or eight. Then Professor Higginson, having for the first time in his life measured, began the ancient and painful but absorbing task of building next. It is the noblest of man's handicrafts. He had heard somewhere that the stretch of a man's arms is about his own height, and in his spread eagle fashion he measured the bed, the desk, the chairs, the book shelves. He carefully put the food down upon the floor, tipped the desk up lengthways on one end. He did this at a terrible strain, and was annoyed to see ink flowing out suddenly and barely missing his trouser leg. With the strength he had not believed to be in him. He wheeled the iron bed out of the inner room and managed to get it hoisted by degrees on top of the desk, thus inverted. He next hoisted up the armchair, getting his head under the seat of it, suffering some pain in his crown before he got it onto the bed. He passed up the three wooden chairs to keep it company, and then with trembling heart but firm will he began to climb. It is a pity that too profound a study of subliminal consciousness destroys faith, for if the professor had but believed in God this would have been an admirable opportunity for prayer. Twice in the long ascent he thought the bed was down on the top of him, twice he felt a trembling that shook his unhappy soul, the floor seemed so far below. At last he stood triumphant, like the first men who conquered the Matterhorn. He was ready to erect upon so firm a base the last structure he had planned. Quaint memories of his childhood returned to him, as he fixed the wooden chairs one upon the other, and jammed the loess of them in between the arms of the Patateezy chair, which was to support the whole. If the first part of the ascent had proved perilous, this last section, the gingerly mounting of a ladder of chair-wongs and legs uneasily poised upon a cushioned seat, was as hazardous as ever human experiment had been. The frail structure creaked and trembled beneath him, as with infinite caution and testing he swung one long leg after the other up the frail scaffolding. An unworthy eagerness made his heart beat when he was within the last rung of the top chair seat. The glass of the skylight was all but within his reach. He could almost touch it with his outstretched hand as he tried the last step. But already ominously the wooden child of his fancy the engine he had made was beginning to betray him. He felt an uneasy swinging of the tower of chairs. He tried to compensate it by too sudden a movement of his body and then crash, and in the tenth of a second all was ruined. He felt his head striking a rung of wood. A cushion, an iron bar, his hands clutching at a chaotic and cascading ruin of furniture, and he completed his adventure sitting hard upon the floor, with the legs of the wooden chairs about him, the stuffed armchair upside down within a foot of his head, the iron bedstead hanging at a dangerous slant above the end of the desk, and the wood of this last gaping, in a great gash. He had certainly failed. There is no soul so strong, but defeat will check it for a moment. All the long hours remaining of that day, even when he had eaten food and drunk wine, he despaired of any issue. As darkness closed in on him he raised the energy to get the bed down on to the floor again. He made it up as best he could. The sheets were clean, the pillows comfortable, and he slept. Upon the Wednesday morning he woke, but now I must play a trick upon the reader, lest worse should befall him. I must beg him to allow the lapse of that Wednesday, and to consider the professor rising with the first faint dawn of Thursday, why they should keep him thus confined, how long they intended to do so, whether those fiendish youngsters were determined upon his slow starvation and death, what was happening to that miserable check, and therefore to his future peace of mind, through the whole term of his life, where he was, by what means, if any, he might be restored to the companionship of his kind. All these things did the professor ruminate one hundred times, and upon none could he come to any conclusion. Such an occupation were monotonous for the reader to follow, and even if he desires to follow it, I cannot be at the pains of writing it out. So here we are on Thursday morning, the fifth of May, forty-eight hours after he, the philosopher, had done the deed and handed the sad forgery to his captors. If the truth must be told, repose and isolation had done professor Higginson good. In the first place, he had read right through the few books he had found set out for him and thus became thoroughly acquainted for the first time in his life with the poet Milton, the New Testament, and Goshen on foreign exchanges, for such was the library which had been provided for him. As he rose and stretched himself in that disappointing dawn, he found the energy to go through his empty ceremony of howling for aid, but it soon pauled and his throat began to hurt him. He looked up again at that skylight showing clear above the half-darkness of the room, and was struck quite suddenly with a really brilliant scheme. He remembered bitterly the painful misfortune of his first attempt, rubbed a sore place, and wished to heaven that his present revelation had come first. He proceeded to execute at once the promptings of his new scheme. He took the sheets of his bed and tied them one to another, the pillowcases he linked up upon the tail of these, and to make certain of the whole matter he ended by tying on the counter pain as well. He tied them all securely together for he intended the rope so made to bear his whole weight. Taking one of the broken chairs he secured it stoutly to one end of the line. He chose his position carefully beneath the skylight. He swung the chair and at the end of the third swing hurled it up into the air at the glass above him. It was his plan to break that glass. The chair would catch up on the ridge of the roof outside, and he would manage in his desperation to swarm up the tied sheets and win his way through the broken pane to the roof. The chair was heavy and he failed some twenty times. Twice the chair had struck him heavily on the head as it fell back, but he persevered. Perseverance is the one virtue which the gods reward, and at long last the professor saw and heard his missile crashing clean through the skylight. He was as good as free, save that such is the academic temper. He had forgotten to get hold of the other end of the line. He heard the chair rattle loudly down the roof outside. He saw its long trail of knotted sheets swiftly drawn up through the broken skylight. He leapt up to clutch it just too late, and marked in despair the last of his bed-clothes flashing up past and above him like a white snake to disappear through the broken window from his gaze. Two seconds afterwards he heard the chair fall into the garden some fifty feet below, and he noted with some disgust that a quantity of broken glass had come down upon his food. It was, as I have said, in the first gray light of the third day, the Thursday, that he had thus gratuitously shed his bedding. For some moments after that failure he sat down and despaired. He also felt his head where the chair had struck it. As he turned round helplessly to discover whether some object might not suggest a further plan, he was astonished to see the great open door standing ajar. He pulled it open to its widest extent. The green bay's door beyond swung to his touch, and he was a free man. Someone had slipped those bolts in the night, and if that someone were Jimmy, Jimmy had kept his word. It was with no gatter to the Professor Higginson cautiously and fearfully descended the stairs. He knew so little of men that he dreaded further capture in some vigorous young scoundrel leaping upon him from an unexpected door. He passed three flights, each untenanted, furnitureless and quite silent, until he reached the hall. The front door stood wide open. The delicious breath of the early summer morning came in, mixed with the twittering of birds. Still wandering and half doubting his good fortune, Professor Higginson was about to step out when he remembered what? The green overcoat. He must face the ordeal of those stairs again. It was the bravest thing he had ever done in his life. It was the only brave thing he had ever done in his life. But fear of worse things compelled him. If that green overcoat were found and he were traced, he dared not think in the consequences. His recent experience was far too vivid for him to dream of putting it on. He carried the great weight of it over his arm, and in the first steps he took in the open air towards the lodge, under that pure sky in which the sun had not yet risen. It was his honest and his firm intention to take it straight to Crampton Park to discover Lauderdale to restore it to its owner and to explain all. The lodge he found to be empty and even ruinous. A moldy gate stood with one of its bars broken, hanging by a single hinge ajar. He passed out upon a lonely country lane. He was glad it was lonely. An elderly Don in an exceedingly dirty shirt clad in evening clothes, which had been through something worse than a prize fight, his collar crumpled in vial, no tie, and boots half buttonless, would be foolish to desire any general companionship of human strangers upon a May Day morning. It was up to him to find his whereabouts, and to make the best of his way to his lodgings and to proper clothing. Then he hoped by six at the latest he could do what the voice of duty bade him do. He felt in his pocket and was glad to find his latch-key and his money safe, for with these two a man commands the world. But as he felt in his pockets he missed something familiar. What it was he could not recollect, only he knew vaguely something he expected was not there, a memorandum or what not. He set it down for nervousness and went his way. The rolling landscape of the Midlands was to his left and right. The lane ran along a ridge that commanded some little view upon either side. It led him northwards, and he could see in the clear air for the moment smokeless the tall chimneys of Ormiston. They were perhaps five miles away, and the professor prepared to cover that distance. His heart was shot with a varied emotion, of exaltation at the morning freedom of terror that his evil deeds might have gone before him. But he was determined upon his duty under that cold dawn. He went swinging forward. The East put on its passing cloudless colors, and beyond the rim of fields far upward beyond the world, Phoebus Apollo rose unheralded, and shone with his first level beams upon the misguided man. Now almost as Apollo rose, whether proceeding from Apollo's influence or from that of some darker power, hesitation and scheming entered once more into the heart of Professor Higginson. First he found that he was getting a little tired of the way. Five miles was a long distance. Then he remembered his determination to give up the coat. It was heavy. Why, carry it five miles and make a fool of himself at the end of them. By the second mile he had come to the conclusion that it was ridiculous to knock up what was probably a wealthy merchant's household, Lauderdale sounded like that, so did Crampton Park, at such unearthly hours. The man was certainly wealthy. He had seen his name in the papers when he had got his chair a few months before. In the third mile Mr. Higginson determined not to fulfill his difficult mission until he had groomed himself and could call upon this local bigwig at a reasonable hour. Such men, he remembered, were influential in provincial towns. In the midst of the fourth mile he saw before him the first of the tall standards which marked the end of an electric tramway, and at that point stood a shelter very neat provided by some local philanthropic scoundrel. It sent up a grateful little curl of smoke which promised coffee. The professor came to the door of the shelter, timidly turned its handle and peered in. Three men were within. Two seemed to be night watchmen, one of whom was concocting the brew, the other cutting large slices of bread and butter. The third man, short, stubbly, and of an expression wholly dull and vicious, was not in their uniform. He had the appearance of a man whose profession was very vague and seemed to be lounging there for no better purpose than catching a cup from pals. He was remarkable for nothing but a broken nose. The professor smelt the delicious steam. He came in through the doorway and all three men looked up. It is a beautiful trait in our national character that the poor will ever welcome the wealthier classes, particularly when these betray upon their features that sort of imbecile ignorance of reality and childish trust in rogues, which is common to all the liberal professions save that of the law, which is rare in merchants, which is universal in dons. If the mass of our people love a guileless simplicity in their superiors, when it is accompanied by debauched, they positively adore it. And the excellent reception the professor met with upon his entry was due more than anything else to the conviction of his three inferiors, that an elderly man in tattered evening clothes and abominable linen must have spent the night before in getting outrageously drunk. His offer of no less than a shilling for a piece of bread and a cup of coffee was gratefully accepted. The word sir was used at least eighteen times in the first three minutes of the conversation. The professor felt that he was with friends and his self-discipline weakened and weakened by degree after degree. It sank with the coffee and the bread, it sank lower with the respectful tones in which he was addressed, then without warning it vanished, and that soul which had already fallen to forgery and in temperate language went down a further step to sheol. The devil, who had been away during the last two days attending to other business, must have caught the professor as he passed that large gate and have hastened to his side. At any rate, Mr. Higginson deliberately sized up the three men before him, determined with justice that the lounger, the man with a broken nose, was the most corruptible and at the same time the least dangerous if anything should come to the dreadful word, police. He led up to his subject carefully. He said that Crampton Park was in the neighborhood, was it not? He had heard that it lay somewhere to the left in a western suburb of the town. He professed to have found the green oracote in the hall of the house where he had passed the night, and as he used these words the three toilers discreetly smiled. He professed to have promised to return it. He professed to remember with grateful unexpectedness the name of the house to which he had promised to send it. It was Lauderdale. He professed an ignorance of the name of its owner. The professor professed far more that morning of sin than his academic professorship entitled him to do. He found the lounger with the broken nose somewhat indifferent to his motives, but very much aligned to the economics of the situation, and when the bargain was struck it was for half a crown that the bad proletarian man with the broken nose took the green oracote over his disreputable arm promising to deliver it at Lauderdale in the course of the morning. An immense weight was lifted from the unworthy mind of Professor Higginson. Must I tell the whole of the shameful tale? The professor as he rose to leave the shelter positively added to his fellow citizen of the broken nose. Oh, and by the way, of course he will ask who the coat is from. Say it is from Mr. Hitchenbrook. He pretended to feel in his pocket. No, I haven't got a card. Anyhow, say Mr. Hitchenbrook, Mr. Hitchenbrook of Cachington, he added genially to round off the wicked lie. Thus relieved of duty and thus divorced from heaven, Professor Higginson nodded authoritatively to the broken nose, cheerfully to the other two men who touched their hair with their forefingers in reply, and strode out again to follow the tram lines into the town. Now here, most upright of readers, you will say that the philosopher has fallen to the lowest depth and that no further crime he may commit can entertain you. You are in error. The depths of evil are infinite, and the professor, as he walked down the long road which brought him to Ormiston, was but entering that long road of the spirit which leads to full damnation. End of Chapter 5 Chapter 6 In which Professor Higginson begins to taste the sweets of fame. When Professor Higginson reached the door of his lodgings the Ormiston day had begun. The house was one of a row of eighteenth-century buildings, dignified in a trifle decade, representing in the geology of the town the strata of its first mercantile fortunes. It was here that the first division between the rich and poor of industrial Ormiston had begun to show itself four generations ago, and these roomy, half-deserted houses were the first fruits of that economic change. But Professor Higginson was not thinking of all that as he came up to the well-remembered door, which in the despair of the past nights he had sometimes thought he would never see again. He was thinking of how he looked with his horribly crushed and dirty shirt front, his ruined collar, and his bedraggled evening clothes upon that bright morning. In this reflection he was aided by the fixed stairs of the young serving-maids who were cleaning the doorsteps and unrestrained remarks of youths who passed him in their delivery of milk. The first with their eyes, the second more plainly with their lips, expressed the opinion that he was no longer of an age for wanton pleasures, and he was annoyed and flustered to hear himself compared to animals of a salacious kind, notably the goat. It was not to be wondered at, that being what he was, a man who had never had to think or act in his life. Professor Higginson's one desire was to put his familiar door between himself and such tormentors. He rang the bell furiously and knocked more furiously still. An errand boy, a plumber's apprentice upon his way to work, and a road scavenger joined a milkman and watched him at this exercise in a little group. It was a group which threatened to become larger, for Ormiston is an early town. Professor Higginson, forgetting that Mrs. Randall, his landlady, might not beat up at such an hour, gave another furious assault upon the knocker, suddenly remembered his latch-key, brought it out and was nervously feeling for the keyhole amid jeers upon his aim, when the door was suddenly opened and the considerable figure of Mrs. Randall appeared in the passage. For one moment she looked as people are said to look at ghosts that return from hell. Then, with a shriek that startled the echoes of the whole street, she fell heavily against the professor's unexpected form, nearly bringing it down the steps. Mr. Higginson was guilty of a nervous movement of repulsion. A little more, and he would have succeeded in shaking off the excellent but very weighty woman, who had thus greeted his return, but even as he did so he heard the odious comments of the Ormiston chivalry, notably the milkman, who told him not to treat his wife like a savage. The plumber also called it cruel. It was therefore with some excuse that the great psychologist thrust the lady of the house within and slammed the door behind him with his heel. Mrs. Randall was partially recovered, but still woefully shaken. He got past her brutally enough, pushed into the ground floor room in the front of the house and sat down. He felt the exhaustion of his walk and the irritation of the scene which had just passed to be too much for him. Mrs. Randall, with a large affection, stood at the table before him, leaning heavily upon it with her fists and saying, Oh, sir, consecutively, several times, until her emotion was sufficiently calm to permit a rational speech, then she asked him where he had been. It's the talk of the whole town, sir. Oh, and me too, never, I never thought to see you again. At which point, in her interrogation, Mrs. Randall broke suddenly into a flood of tears, punctuated by sobs as explosive as they were sincere. She sat down, the better to enjoy this relief. And even as she had risen to its climax, and the professor was being moved to louder and louder objugation, the bell rang and the hammer knocked in a way that was not to be denied. The unfortunate man caught what glimpse he could from the window, and was horrified to see two officers of the law supported by a crowd grown to respectable dimensions, the foremost members of which were giving accurate information upon all that had happened. The philosopher summoned the manhood to open the door and to face his accusers. They were not so startled as Mrs. Randall, who now came up with red and tearful face and somewhat out of breath, but her weeping largely overlained with indignation to protest against the violation of her house. The first of the policeman had hardly begun his formal questioning of Professor Higginson when the second, looking a little closer, recognized his prayer, that subtle air which no civilian can hope to possess, and by which, like the savages of Central Africa, the British police convey thought without words or message, acted at once upon the second man, and he adopted a manner of the utmost respect. To prove his zeal, he dispersed the crowd of loungers saluted and told the Professor that it was his duty to ask him formally certain questions, where at his colleague, he that had first recognized the great man, added with equal humility that as Mr. Higginson had been lost and the university moving the police in the matter, it was only their duty to ask what they should do and what light Mr. Higginson could throw on the affair. There was a report of fighting. To this Mrs. Randall interposed without a trace of logic. Fighting yourself! The Professor was very glad to answer any questions that might be put to him, and very much relieved when he found that these were no more than what the police required to trace the misadventure of so prominent a citizen, at whose hand he had suffered or what adventure had befallen him. Was it murder? But they saw it was not that. Whether the reward which had been offered should be withdrawn, and what clues the Professor could furnish. Mr. Higginson looked blankly at these men, then his eyes lit with anger. It was upon the very point of pouring out the whole story of his woes, when, with that cold wind upon the heart which they condemned feel, when they awake to reality upon the morning of execution, he remembered the check and was suddenly silent. You'd better leave me, he muttered. You'd better leave me, officer. We were instructed, sir, again the senior man more respectfully than ever, then Professor Higginson bolted to refuge. Well, I will see you in a minute. I must put myself right. I am all weak might understand, sir, said the policemen, taking their stations in the ground floor room, and drawing chairs as with the intention of sitting down and awaiting his pleasure. I will see you when I can. Mr. Strandl, please bring me some hot water. And with these words the poor man dashed upstairs to his bedroom upon the first floor. There are ways of defeating a woman's will when she has passed the age of forty, and these are described in books which deal either with an imaginary world of fiction or with a remote and unattainable past. No living man has dealt with the art, nor can wizards show you an example of it. Therefore when Mrs. Randl returned with the hot water, it was Mrs. Randl that won. The Professor poked his head through the door and reached out for the can. Mrs. Randl broke his center, marched for the wash handstand, poured out the grateful liquid, tempered it with cold, motherly tested its temperature with her large red hand, and the while opened fire with a rattle of questions particularly begging him not to tell her anything until he was quite rested. Of course there were the police, she said, and she would have to tell her own tale, too, and, oh dear, if he only knew what had had been those days, with the mayor himself and what not, at each stage in her operation she was careful to threaten a fit of crying. Professor Higginson's tactics were infantile. They were those of his sex. He took off his evening coat and waistcoat preparatory to washing. Upon minor occasions in the past mere affairs of outposts Mrs. Randl had taken cover before this manoeuvre. Today the occasion was decisive and she stood firm. And the principle of the university too, sir, and his dear young lady, and, oh, when they put that news in the paper which wasn't true, thanks be to God. Here, as Mrs. Randl approached tears again, the desperate philosopher threw his braces from his shoulder, plunged his face and hands into the water, and finally hoped that when he lifted it again the enemy would have fled. But Mrs. Randl was a widow, and the first sound he heard as the water ran out of his ears was the continuing string of lamentations and questionings. Where is the towel, he asked abruptly. Where it's been since last Monday, sir, said Mrs. Randl, since that last blessed Monday when we thought to lose you forever. I never thought to change it. I never thought to see you back all of a heap like this. Last Monday, hesitated Mr. Higginson genuinely enough. His calendar had got a little muddled. What's today? He said it easily. Then he saw a look on her face. There is a rank in society in which to forget the day of the week has a very definite connotation. It means—it means something wrong with the brain. Like a flash in Avenue of Salvation was suggested to the hunted man by Mrs. Randl's look. He could lose those few days. They could disappear from his life utterly, and with them that accursed business of the green overcoat and the fatal checkbook it had hidden in its man-destroying folds. In the very few seconds which creative work will take under the influence of hope and terror, the scheme began to elaborate itself in the narrow mind of the poor persecuted Don. He flopped down upon a chair, paused suddenly in the vigorous rubbing of his face with the towel, passed his hand over the baldness of his forehead, and muttered vacantly, Where am I? You're here, sir. Oh, you're here! said good-kind Mrs. Randl in an agonized tone, positively going down upon her knees. No easy thing when religion has departed with youth, and lay in one hand upon his knee. The Professor laid his left hand upon hers, passed his right hand again over his face, and gasped in a thin voice. Where's here? In Quebec Street, in your own room, sir. Oh, sir, don't you know me? I'm Martha Vando. The Professor looked down at her with weary but forgiving eyes. I do now, he said. It comes back to me now. Oh, Lord! said Martha Vando. I'll send the girl for the chemist. And she was gone. Women may be stronger than we men, my brothers, but we are more cunning. And when she had gone, the Professor, dropping the mask and dressing with extreme alacrity, made himself passable in morning clothes. His plan had developed still further in the few minutes it took him to go downstairs, and as he entered the room where the policeman awaited him, he was his own master and theirs. They rose at his entrance. He courteously bade them be seated again, and not allowing them to get any advantage of the first word, told them the plain truth in a few simple and cultivated sentences, such as could not but carry conviction to any insufficiently salvered official. I think it well, officer, he said, addressing the senior of the two men, to tell you the truth here privately. I will, of course, put the whole thing later before the proper authorities. The policeman looked grave and acquiescent. The fact is, replied Professor Higginson rapidly, I had been working very hard at my address which you may have heard of. The two men looked at once as though they had. It was for the Bergson Society, he explained courteously, and the older policeman nodded as though he were a member himself. Well, went on Professor Higginson in the tone of a man who must out with it at last. The fact is, there followed, there followed, I'm sorry to say, there followed something like a stroke at any rate, bad nervous trouble. I have suffered apparently for some days, from a complete loss of memory. And having put the matter plainly and simply in such a fashion, Professor Higginson was silent. We quite understand, sir, said the senior, the two policemen gravely, sympathetically and respectfully. There shan't be a word from us, sir, except, of course, no, said Professor Higginson firmly. I am determined to do my duty in this matter, those whom it is proper to tell. At this moment Mrs. Randall, accompanied by a half-dressed servant, herself in an untied bonnet and somewhat out of breath, was heard at the open door with the reluctant and sleepy chemist, who was her medical adviser. And he was that bad he thought I was his poor old mother who's been dead these twenty years, went Mrs. Randall's voice outside. But a moment afterwards, as she came into the inner room, she saw the Professor seated and clothed, and in his right mind, he rejected her exuberance. Now Mrs. Randall, he said rather sharply and forgetting for a moment the natural nervous weakness to be expected of one who had suffered such things, I have told the officers here, and I desire you to know it as well. He glanced at the chemist, rapidly decided that the more people knew his tale the better, and said with intentional flattery, I thank you, sir, for coming. You are a medical man. Then he continued turning to the policeman again. You understand. There is unfortunately very little to say. My last recollection is of leaving Sir John Perkins' house. He was giving a party on—on—wait a moment—it was Monday. I remember having a sort of shock just after getting out of his gate, and then I do not remember anything more until I was approaching this house. It will be Tuesday today. No, sir, said the policeman, with grave reverence for one so learned, so distinguished, and at the same time so unique in misfortune. It reminded him of the wonderful things in the Sunday papers, and he believed. No, sir, today is Thursday. Thursday, said the professor, affecting bewilderment with considerable skill. Thursday, he repeated, turning to the chemist who said solemnly, Thursday, sir. Oh, poor dear, immediately howled Mrs. Randall. Be quiet, shouted Professor Higginson very rudely. If it is Thursday, he continued to the others, dropping his voice again. This is a more serious thing than I had imagined. Why, three whole days, and yet—wait, and here he extended one hand and covered his eyes with the other. I seem to have an impression of cold meat, a room, voices—no, it is gone. The younger policeman pulled out a notebook and an extremely insufficient pencil, which was at once short thick and bald-headed. Lost any valuable, sir, he began. The professor slapped his pockets, and then suddenly remembered that he had changed his clothes. No, he mused. No, not to my knowledge. I had my watch, he began to tick off on his fingers, and a few shillings changed. But for the life of him he couldn't decide whether to lose valuables or not, on the whole he decided not to. No, after careful thought. No, I lost nothing. My boots were very damp as I took them off, if that is any clue. The younger policeman was rapidly putting it all down in the official shorthand. Habit compelled him to make the outline. The prisoner, persistently denied, he scratched it out, and but the professor told us that he had not then came the second question. In what part of town, sir, might it be that you knew yourself again, sir, so to speak? I've told you. Close by here, said Professor Higginson. Yes, but come in which way like? Here was a magnificent opening. He had never thought of that. He considered what was the most central part of the town, what least suggested a suburb. He remembered a dirty old mid-Victorian church, now the cathedral, in the heart of the city, and he said, St. Anne's. It was close to St. Anne's. Then he remembered, most luckily, that there were witnesses to his having come up the street from exactly the opposite quarter, and he added, At least that's where I begin to remember a little, but I wondered about. I didn't remember the street for a good hour, and even when I came here I was still troubled. Mrs. Randall will tell you. Oh, began Mrs. Randall. Lord knows he gave a cry that loud on seeing me, but the policeman did not want to hear this. He put this third question. About what time might this be? About, said the professor, speaking slowly but thinking at his fastest. About three hours ago. It was still dark. It was getting light. I remember going through the streets, getting a little clearer from time to time as to what I was doing and where I was. The maneuver was not without wisdom. Had he made the time shorter there would have been inquiries, and they might have lit upon the three men in the shelter, and that detestable green overcoat might have come in once more to ruin his life. As it was, whoever the middle-aged person in battered evening clothes may have been who had entered the shelter on that morning, it could not be he. The policeman strapped the elastic over his notebook again. That'll do, sir, he said kindly. Mrs. Randall was swift to find a couple of glasses of beer, which beverage the uncertain hours of their profession permit the constabulary to consume at any period whatsoever of the day or night, and what I may call the Great Higginson Lost Memory Case started on its travels round the world. During the remainder of that day, the Thursday, Professor Higginson was prodigal enough of his experience. It was a great thing for a professor of subliminal psychology to have come in direct touch in this way with one of the most interesting of psychical phenomena. Everyone he met in the next hours had a question to ask, and every question did Professor Higginson meet with a strange facility, but alas with renewed and more complex untruth. Had he any recollections? Yes, yes, there were faces. Yes, there were faces, drawn faces. He could say more, he hinted, for the thing was still sacred to him. One cross questioned a little too closely about the sense of time. Had he an idea of its flight during that singular vision? Yes, yes, in a way. He remembered a conversation, a long one, and a flight, a flight through space. What? A flight through space? He told the story with much fuller details that very morning about noon to his most intimate personal friend, the editor of the second paper in Ormiston. He told it again at the club at lunch to a small audience with the zest of a man who is describing a duel of his. He told it to a larger audience over coffee after lunch. He went back to arrange matters at the university and to say that he could take up his work the next morning. It was to the dean, who was also a professor of chemistry, to the vice principal and to the chaplain that he had to unbosom himself on this official occasion. All were curious, and by the time they had cheered him, the desperate man's relation had grown to be one of the most exact and beautiful little pieces of modern psychological experience conceivable. All the functionings of the subconscious man in the absence of a coordinating consciousness were falling into place, and the world that is beyond this world had been visited by the least likely of the sons of men. As one detail suggested another, the necessity for a coherent account bred what mere experience could never have done. Now and then in conversations, Professor Higginson thought he heard a note of doubt in some inquirer's voice. It spurred him to new confirmations, new lies. For his mathematical colleague he swore to the fourth dimension, for his historical one, to a conspectus of time, little windows into the past he called it, the horrid man. Then, then in a moment of horror, he did the fatal thing. It was a research man called Garden who goaded him. Garden had said, What were the faces? What were the voices? How did they differ from dreams? Professor Higginson felt the spur point. Garden, he said, facing that materialist with a marvellously solemn look. Garden, how do you know reality? I saw. I heard. He shuddered successfully. Garden, he went on abruptly. Have you ever loved one who died? Bless you, yes, answered Garden cheerfully. Garden continued the philosopher in a deep but shaken voice. I too have lost where I loved, and he almost whispered the rest. And we held communion during that brief time. What, said Garden? He stared at the tall, lanky professor of psychology. He didn't believe, not a word, but it was the first time he had come across that sort of lunacy, and it shocked him. What, the dead? Mr. Higginson nodded twice with fixed lips and faraway eyes. There is proof, he said, and was gone. Garden stared after him, then he shrugged his shoulders, muttered, bad as a hatter, and turned to go his way. His about five o'clock. Among other things which the devil had done in that period with which the story deals was the planting in Ormiston of a certain servant of his by name George Babcock. George Babcock had come to Ormiston after a curious and ill-explained, a short and decisive episode in his life. He had begun as a young theorist who had startled Europe from the foreign university where he was studying by a thesis now forgotten abroad, but won the memory of which still lingered in England, for a paper had boomed it. It had been a scornful and triumphant reputation of the hypnotists of Nancy. George Babcock had rolled the Nancy School over and over and for a good five years the young English writer, with his perfect command of German, had been the prophet of common sense. Hypnotism, as that school called their charlatanry, was done for a series of clumsy frauds, a thing of illusions, special apparatus, and lies. Unfortunately for civilization the superstitions of the hypnotists, as we know, prevailed and European science has grown ashamed since that day of its earlier and manlier standpoint. It has learnt to talk of autosuggestion. It has fallen so low as to be interested in lords. Long before 1890 George Babcock's book was ruined abroad, but George Babcock was a man with a knowledge of the road, and while his reputation, dead upon the continent, was at its height, in England he suddenly appeared, no longer as a theorist, but as a practicing doctor in London. He had borrowed the money for the splash on the strength of that English reputation, which he retained, and for ten years he was a big man. It was said that he had saved a great deal of money. He certainly made it. Then there came no one knows what. The professionals who were most deeply in the know hinted at a quarrel with the great ladies upon the secrets of his trade and theirs. At any rate, for another three years after the little episode George Babcock's name took a new and inferior position in the Daily News, it appeared in the lists of city dinners at medians at the head of middle-class leagues and movements that failed. When it was included in the list of a country house party, that party would not be of quite the first flight. And what was terribly significant to those few who can look with judgment and pity on the modern world, articles signed by the poor fellow began to appear in too great a quantity of the magazines. He even published three books. It was very sad. Then came the incorporation of the University of Ormiston, or as people preferred to call it from those early days the Guelph University, after the name of a patron and the Prime Minister's private secretary had been sent to suggest as the head of the medical school the name of George Babcock. He was neither a knight nor a baronet, but Ormiston did not notice that. The old glamour of his name lingered in that prosperous town. A married cousin of the mayor of that year whose wife dined out in London reported his political power. The merchants and the rest of the newly formed senate of the university timidly approached the great man, and the great man jumped at it. He had now for five years been conducting his classes at the absurdly low salary of nine hundred pounds a year. George Babcock remained, after all his escapades and alarms, such as they may have been, a man of energy and of singular organizing power, an atheist of course, and one possessed both of clear mental vision and a sort of bodily determination that would not fail him until his body failed. His face and his shoulders were square. His jaw, too, was strong. The looseness of his thick mouth was what one would expect from what was known about him by those who knew. His eyes were fairly steady, occasionally sly, his brows and forehead handsomely clean, his hair thick and strongly gray. This was the figure Garden saw coming up the street towards him as Professor Higginson shambled off our radio-distant figure nearing the gates of the college, for it was in the street without that the Professor had met the research man and made that fatal move. To say that Garden was glad to meet Babcock would be to put it too strongly. No one was ever glad to meet Babcock. But to say that he was indifferent to the chance of blabbing would not be true. No one is indifferent to the chance of blabbing. I say Babcock, he said, checking the advancing figure with his raised hand. Old Higginson's gone mad. Babcock smiled uglily. Yes, he has, said Garden, saying all sorts of things about that little trouble he had. Saw ghosts. They all do, said Babcock grimly. Oh, yes, I know, answered Garden, eager for the importance of his tail. But he's got it all pat. He says he can prove it. Garden nodded mysteriously. He gave me some details, you know. Went on Garden, mostly responsibly, then he pulled himself up. He wanted to have something important to say. But he was a nervous man than handling those tear-dittles which are the bulk of interesting conversation. Babcock looked skeptical. What sort of details, he sneered. Oh, I'm not allowed to tell you, said Garden uneasily. But it was very striking, really it was. Then suddenly he broke away. He felt he might be led on and he didn't want to make a fool of himself. He rather wished he hadn't spoken. Babcock let him go, and as Garden disappeared in his turn the doctor paced more slowly. He was not disturbed, but he was interested. Everyone in the university had heard of Higginson's spiritual experience. Everyone was already talking of it. That wasn't the odd part. The odd part, he mused, was a man like Garden taking it seriously. The more Babcock thought of it, the more favourably a certain possibility presented itself. He made his way toward the telephone room at the Porter's Lodge, asked them to call up a number in London, and waited patiently until he obtained it. He took the full six minutes, and it will interest those who reverence our ancient constitution to know that the person to whom George Babcock was talking was a peer, one of those few peers who live at the end of a wire, and not only a peer but the owner of many things. The man at the other end of the wire was the owner of railway shares innumerable, for the moment of stores of wheat, for he was gambling in that, and in particular of many newspapers, chief of which a sheet which had thrust back into their corners all older, milder things, and had come to possess the mind of England. This premier newspaper was called The Howl. Nor did the writer of that letter own The Howl only, but altogether some eighty other rags, nor in this country only, was he feared, though he was more feared in this country than in any other. It was his boast that he could make and unmake men, and every politician in turn had blacked his boots, and he had made judges, and had at times decided upon peace and war. A powerful man, known to his gutter, before he bought his peerage, as Mr. Cake, a flabby man, and vulgar. O my word! This man at the other end of the wire knew much too much about George Babcock, and George Babcock knew that he knew it. From time to time George Babcock, sickening at the recollection of such knowledge, privy only to him and to his lordship, was moved to services which, had he been a free man, he would not have undertaken. He is about to perform such a service now. He told the story briefly to that telephone receiver. He insisted on the value of it. The man at the other end of the wire was very modern. He had a list of expresses before him. He told George Babcock to expect a letter that would come up by the six o'clock, and reach Armiston at eight point five. George Babcock would get his instructions by that train. At eight point five, therefore, George Babcock, bound to service and not over-willing, was on the platform, took the packet from the guard, feed him, opened it, and read. The letter was not typewritten. It was a familiar letter, and it was signed, of course, by a single, uninitialed name. For was not its author appear? Meanwhile the unfortunate professor of psychology was wandering within the college buildings, from room to room, from friend to friend, and spreading everywhere as he went along in torturous train of falsehood and of doom. Just before dinner, sitting with the vice principal's wife in her drawing room, he added one very beautiful little point which had previously escaped him, how during what must have been the middle of his curious trance he had heard the most heavenly singing, he who could not tell one note from another on ordinary days. The chaplain had already used him before ten o'clock as a proof of the immortality of the soul in his notes for next Sunday's sermon, and a local doctor had been particularly interested to hear, as they met just before dinner, that though he may have had food and drink during that long period, the only thing he could remember was cold meat, and that only as something seen, not as something consumed. What kind of cold meat, the doctor had said, but Professor Higginson, whose brain was not of the poet's type, had only answered, oh, just cold meat. Thus by the evening of that Thursday was the dread process of publicity began. That night, while all slept, in the two Armiston newspaper offices, shut up in their little dog kennels, the leader writers were scribbling away at top speed, dealing with subliminal consciousness, and the functions uncoordinated of self-cognizant coordination, the one from the conservative, the other from the liberal standpoint. Even the socialist weekly paper, which went to press on Friday, was compelled to have a note upon the subject. But knowing that it must bring in some reference to the nationalization of the means of production and the parsonic fraud, it basically said that Professor Higginson was, like every other supporter of the bourgeois state, a so-called Christian, in which slander, as I need hardly, informed the reader, there was not a word of truth. And so, having dined well with his vice-principal, and had his fill, Professor Higginson set out by night to seek his lodgings. I am glad to get back to his lodgings on that Thursday night, he was beginning to feel the weariness of the lion. I will not deny that some vanity had arisen in him, for he felt the approach of a little local fame. Now vanity, especially when it is connected with the approach of a little local fame, is not good for professors, even in this world, for their chances in the next it is fatal. It is affordable only too acceptable as an instrument to the enemy of souls. Full of this vague sensation of well-being, it was a shock to Professor Higginson to find George Babcock waiting for him in his rooms. Hidden in the right-hand pocket of George Babcock's coat was the letter. It was not typewritten, it was a familiar letter. It was signed by a single, uninitialed name, for its author was up here. Higginson came into the room nervously, less and less pleased to see who his visitor was, but that visitor had something very definite to do. I say, Higginson. He cried suddenly, rising as suddenly at his colleague's entry into the room. You know I don't believe a word of it. A word of what? said Higginson, tartly. Oh, you know, said Babcock, sitting down again, as did Higginson also, and fixing the psychologist with his strong eyes. You've told everybody, and everybody's talking. All this psychical experience, Higginson. All these, damn it, why you're talking ghosts now. He sat back and waited. Babcock, said Higginson, in much the same tones as he had used to fire upon the less defended Mr. Garden. Babcock, you won't believe a plain human tale? The evidence of a witness? True evidence, Babcock? No, I believe you had some, some, well, let's say some mental experience, all right. But I don't believe in all that monkey business. No, I'm interested, Higginson. That's why I've come. He lent forward. I'm really interested. You don't believe that I saw? What I say I saw, said Higginson solemnly. Why, my dear Higginson, you know, one sees things when one's asleep, simple. You don't believe, reiterated Higginson, that I heard when I say I heard. Oh, I believe that right enough, answered Babcock impatiently. What's hearing? My dear fellow, for one case of optical suggestion there are ten cases of aural. Suggestion beat, cried Professor Higginson, too suddenly. It's a funny thing, Higginson, said Babcock, looking curiously at him and pinning his colleague down with that look. It's a funny thing that you spooked Johnny's don't seem to know what evidence is. Ever heard a clever counsel briefed in poison? I have. I began, Professor Higginson, but Babcock interrupted. Now, I knew a fellow once in Italy, not like you, my dear Higginson, not half so honest a man, but he had got hold of what convinces people. It's not what's true. It's what convinces. Babcock smiled oddly, as you said this. He didn't publish it, and this more slowly. I will tell you what it was, for it impressed me. He came into my room early one morning, I knew him well enough, and he told me the whole story of a dola. The telegraph hadn't brought it, Higginson, shaking a finger. We hadn't heard of it. No one in Europe, no one in Egypt. The fight was, well, allowing for longitude, not twelve hours old. In mind you, he didn't give a sort of hint. He didn't work your telepathies stunt, Babcock began to emphasize. He described the whole thing quite clearly, with little men in bushes and hot sand standing clear, like three or four little colored pictures, a colored, painted. You could smell the heat. And he saw a sort of local storm on the scrub in the valley. He did, at least he said he did. He saw the poor fellows left behind, the wounded, you know, he saw the faces of the torturers. Babcock stopped a second and changed his tone. He looked unpleasantly in earnest. He told me I might make money over it, he went on. I was in touch with one of the English papers, like a fool I didn't believe him. After that the telegrams came in. Professor Higginson was watching his colleague. His head stood forward on his long neck. He was fascinated and a little frightened. Well, said Babcock sitting down again and speaking with less apparent purpose. That's all. I think he was a charlatan. I don't know how he got the thing. I've known news spread in Africa among savages a thousand miles and half a day. Anyhow, that sort of thing might convince. To tell you the honest truth, Higginson, your story doesn't. Poor Mr. Higginson flushed. He did not like to be talked to like that. Babcock waited for his reply. It came at last and came in the expected form. I can tell you, Babcock, again Higginson slowly, something I've told no one else. You've driven me to do it, you know. You've heard that, that well that I saw, that I not only heard singing but saw. I saw a multitude of men and women, Babcock. He passed his hand over his face and wished himself well out of it. But sin is a hard master. Well, asked Babcock, quite unchanged in face. Well, proceeded Professor Higginson still more slowly. This is what I have got to tell you. Many, all of those faces and mind you they talked to me, Babcock, they talked to me. The professor was warming to his work. I didn't know, but I knew one, Babcock. And here Higginson's voice fell as his trick had grown to be during these recitals to a deeper tone. Do you know who it was? It was poor Morris. Babcock rose again and came and stood over the wretched philosopher. The philosopher looked up like a child, an airing child. Good heavens, sighed Babcock, what extraordinary ideas you have. That's not what people notice, why men can do that in their sleep. Then was sudden vigor. What else did you see, Higginson, something you couldn't have known, something nobody knew? Professor Higginson thought. Detailed imaginative fiction had never been in his line, though he had dealt in it pretty freely all that day. He thought hard and confusedly. But what he said at the end of the process was startling enough. Very well, Babcock, listen to this. There was in that crowd a figure very different from the others. A mad figure, you will say. Most mournful eyes, Babcock. And well, it's unpleasant, but it smelt of seaweed. Oh, said Babcock, was it dressed? Mr. Higginson thought a minute. Yes, it was dressed, he ventured, groping his way. Yes, it was dressed. It was very oddly dressed, you know, you see, it had dripping wet clothes on dark blue. But Babcock, here Higginson, had an inspiration, and very proud of it he was. It had no arms. Oh, said Babcock musing. It had no arms. There was a gap in their conversation, an end to Babcock's pushing, an end to Higginson's line, a let-up, an interval of repose. It was Babcock who broke it. Well, he sighed. I can't make head or tail of all this, Higginson. Anyhow, I must be going. It's interesting, I know you think you have these experiences, but frankly, all that kind of things beyond me. I don't think it's there. I think it floats in men's brains, false like dreams, and he got up to go. But for the next half hour he was at the telephone again talking to London, and to the ancient aristocracy of Britain, and to the Howell. When he rose from the machine, it was just eleven. The Howell prints news up to two o'clock, smart rag. Next morning, Friday, when he came downstairs, Professor Higginson received a slight but very unpleasant shock. It was a shock of a kind one does not often receive. Like all the rest of the world, Professor Higginson read the Howell at breakfast. The Howell is very well edited, it gives you your thrill in short compass, and every day has some new portent to present. That day the portent was sleeping sickness on a huge scale in London. Ten millionaires were down with it, and a politician was threatened. It wasn't true, and there was a leader on it, but true or false it was of less consequence to Mr. Higginson than one fairly prominent but short item upon the front page. It was not the chief item on it. The chief item was some rubbish about a man it called the Kaiser. It was perhaps a second or third piece of news in importance. End of mysterious career. Nobleman found drowned on Bretton coast. Romantic story. Breast Thursday, May 5th. Fishermen from the remote and old-world village of Caramo report a gruesome discovery upon their rock-bound coast. The Count, Michaelis de Quersaint, a well-known eccentric character in this district, evidently lost his life by shipwreck some few days ago in the neighborhood. It was the Count's habit to cruise up and down this coast during the summer months in Cognito, in a small tin tunner with a couple of men for crew, the unfortunate man having been born without arms, like a certain famous Irish landlord of the last generation, and being very sensitive upon the point. The boat has not been found, with the bodies of three men, one of which is undoubtedly the Count, have been washed up on the rocks. The features are unrecognizable, but there can be no doubt of Count Michaelis' identity. The corpse was clothed in the blue-surge yachting suit, which the Count habitually wore on these expeditions, and the body was that of a man without arms. In the opinion of Dr. Relebecque, whom the government has dispatched to Caramo, the disaster must have taken place about four days ago, and most probably during the gale of last Monday night. The corpse was dressed in blue, it was drowned, it had no arms, a sort of monster. Professor Higginson was unhappy, very unhappy indeed, he also felt sick. Guss of Fear swept over his simple soul. There were moments when he almost smelt the pit, and he groaned in spirit. So powerful was the effect upon him that he was half persuaded of some connection between his foolish lie and doubtful superhuman powers. He didn't like it, it gave him a sense of possession, it left him not his own master. He would not take up the paper again, he left it folded upon his table, and went out a little groggily to walk up the street to college and to take his class. But when Professor Higginson appeared before his class, he was nervously conscious that a great number of young eyes were watching him with quite as much amusement as interest. Not that he was stared at. Provincials are too polite for that, and the earnest provincials who attend their universities are perhaps the politest class in England. But whenever he looked up from his notes he met the glance shy and suddenly withdrawn, now from the left, now from the right, which told him that of the fifty or sixty students before him not one was ignorant of the great adventure. His subject that morning was the hyper-graphical concatenation of the major sensory criteria in psycho-hylomorphic phenomena in the relation of the subjective to the objective aspects of free-flex actions, a fascinating theme, and one which upon any other day he would have analyzed with the moldy bravura that he had cultivated. But that morning something flagged. The interest of the class was elsewhere and Professor Higginson knew only too well where it was. His misfortune or accident was already so much public property that the youths and maidens and the respectful dependents and servitors of the university, as well, were universally acquainted with it. He felt again that touch of vanity in the midst of his embarrassment. The great clock of the university buildings boomed out noon. He shut his notes, looked with his weary eyes at the young faces before him, now lifted to his own, and said, Next time we will take the automatic functions of Guest and Bunny. It is new ground, and I think it will interest you. A timid, fair-haired girl to the rear of the left center asked whether they need by the third edition. She only had the second. He said, full of thought for her purse, that there was no necessity to do such a thing where at the student added. But Professor Higginson, it deals with the subliminal phenomena of a loss of mim. That'll do, that'll do, cried Professor Higginson sharply. He could have sworn that he heard a titter. He looked up wearily at the window as his class tramped out. It was raining. When he had changed his cap and gown for the bowler hat and umbrella in Macintosh of his civilization, he stepped out under the archway into the street, glad to be rid of his duties for the day, profoundly glad to be alone. He had fallen, as his habit was, into a conversation with himself, half-allowed, happily oblivious of the suspicious glances passers by, which he would have imagined to be testimony to his unhappily growing fame, when he received a sharp blow-up on the back from the open hand of some vigorous person, and turned round with an exclamation to see no less than Babcock again. Professor Higginson turned under his umbrella to catch that figure at his side, and saw beyond it a very different figure, a figure draped entirely in a long raincoat of some sort trailing almost to the ground. Peeping above the front of that coat was a clerical dog collar, and above the clerical dog collar a long face, the eyes of which always looked towards some spot far off. Well, Higginson, said Babcock, you've done it now. Done what? said Professor Higginson, knowing only too well what he had done. Made yourself famous, said George Babcock shortly. I don't know that, said Professor Higginson, and he nervously wondered whether the drip upon his back were from his own umbrella or his neighbors. Of course, a thing like that will be talked about. It's what you said about the heavenly singing that did it, said George Babcock brutally, and as he said it, Professor Higginson, glancing at him sideways, saw a definite curl downwards upon the big loose lips. As they passed the door of the university common room, Babcock halted and said, While I'm going in. Are you coming with me, Higginson? No, said Professor Higginson, with singular determination. All right, said Babcock, not insisting. Charles will see you home. I ought to have told you this is my wife's brother, Charles. He's a parson, he added rudely, as though the external signs of that profession were absent. You go with him, Charles. It's on your way. Tell Clara I'm coming. Back before one. And George Babcock, the strong, pushed through the swing doors of the club and left his brother-in-law and his colleague in the rain outside. Professor Higginson and the religious person walked for a few minutes in silence. For one thing the professor did not know the name of the minister, and it was the minister who first broke that silence. You heard singing, he said abruptly, and as he said it, he still stared in front of him at some distant point beyond this world, and steered himself by his great nose. He did not look at his companion, and he repeated in tones of subdued wonder. You heard singing. I read it in the Ormiston paper today. Professor Higginson had never in his life been rude to a man at the first meeting. He did not know how it was done. Yes, he said, after a fashion. Ah, said the Reverend Charles, and they went on another fifty yards in silence through the rain. The streets were quite deserted. Professor Higginson was appalled to find his companion's hand laid firmly upon his shoulder. The other hand held the umbrella above. The person looked immensely into his eyes. I wish I were you, he said, or rather, I don't wish I were you. Then he loosed hold, and they walked on together again. Professor Higginson was profoundly uncomfortable. He was professor of subliminal psychology, and far be it from him to fall into the vulgar errors of the materialist, but the man did seem to him a little cracked. And when he whispered for the third time, you heard singing. Professor Higginson was in that mood where in weak men run. Now Professor Higginson prided himself that he was not a weak man. The Reverend Charles began talking very loudly to himself, not in the half tones of self-communion common to the academic temper, but quite out loud, almost as though he were preaching. Singing. Lovely, chanting voices, singing to the sound of harps and in that light which dyeth not. For they that stand in it are the inheritors of the world to come. That's from Pearson, he added abruptly, changing to a perfectly natural tone. Do you know Pearson's work? No, said Professor Higginson, immensely relieved at the change in the tone. No, to tell the truth I do not. He saw what you saw, said the Reverend gentleman nodding gravely under his umbrella as he strode forward, but he hadn't your chance at convincing the world. No. And here he shook his head as gravely as he had nodded it. The rain still fell, the wet streets still stretched out before them. It has been given to many men, began the Reverend Charles again in a totally different tone, this time the intellectual interrogative, to see the hidden places but your chance. Professor Higginson said nothing. He was beginning to feel uncomfortable again. He was not a materialist, what man of his great attainments could be. But on the other hand there was such a thing as going too far in the other direction. Then he reasoned with himself. The Reverend Charles had no weapon, he the Professor was a tall man and hang at all, he had no right to be certain that the man was mad. They had come to Professor Higginson's door. There, in the pouring rain, Professor Higginson put in the latch-key, opened the door and asked in common courtesy whether his colleague's brother-in-law would come in. His colleague's brother-in-law half shut the dripping umbrella, held out a huge and bony hand, fixed the embarrassed don with luminous distant eyes, grasped his nervously offered hand in return, and said sadly, with a world of meaning, no, I will not come in, I will leave you to those voices of the great peace. Then it was that Professor Higginson noticed, standing in the mean little hall, humbly enough, a mean little man, short, wearing a threadbare coat and a drenched bowler hat. Professor Higginson said this apparition gently. Professor Higginson, I presume? What? snapped the Professor, still holding the person's hand like the handle of a pump. May I see you a moment? I represent the Sunday machine. No, thundered Professor Higginson, dropping the reverend hand in his excitement. I'm tired, it's not lunchtime yet, I don't know what you mean. The little man was at once flabbergasted and hurt. The reverend Charles smiled a cadaverous smile, but one as luminous as his eyes. May I supply the place? he said in a voice that was musical in two tones. He stood there winningly in the open doorway with his dripping umbrella and his huge unoccupied right hand still held out. The little reporter, not quite understanding what he should do, grasped that great hand, just as Professor Higginson had grasped it, and then stood helpless. Professor Higginson was at the end of his patience, he said sharply. You must come again. You must come again. This isn't the moment. In another minute he would have apologized for his abruptness, but the little journalist had pried and had already gone out, without an umbrella thrusting his pathetic little notebook into his threadbare pocket, and the reverend brother-in-law, after giving one great revealing look into the darkness of the hall, had gone out also. Professor Higginson heard the door slam behind him. His curiosity prompted him to gaze upon them out of a window. They were going off together through the rain into the heart of the town, and it seemed to the Professor that the parson was more animated than before. He turned to his companion continually, and his gestures were broad. More fame was brewing. All that Friday afternoon he kept his room. He forbade Mrs. Randall to admit a soul. He went to bed early and slept ill. The wages of sin is death. Professor Higginson came down next morning in a very miserable mood. A vast pile of letters stood beside his plate, and there also he saw the howl, folded, keeping its dreadful secret. He was sure it had one for him. The sheet, with its harmless outer cover, its advertisements of patent poisons and its bold title, menaced him. It fascinated him too. He hesitated, reached for it, opened it, and the blow fell. To his horror there stared him in the face two great lines, nay three, of huge block headline type, counting more in the front page of that day than the sleeping sickness, than the might of Germany or the turpitude of Kalamazoo. They ran thus. Evidence of a future life. Revelations of a great psychologist. Professor Higginson testifies to supernatural experiences. Recognition of the dead. There are parts of the body that grow cold under excitement of an unpleasant type. Among these may be noted the forehead, certain muscles upon either side of the vertebrae and the region of the knees. Had Professor Higginson been free to note these interesting phenomena proceeding in his own person, it might have been of advantage to science. All he knew was that he felt extremely ill. He pushed his breakfast plate away from him, folded the paper into two rows from the table and stood bending over the mantelpiece with his head upon his hand. Then he mastered himself, sat down, and began to read this. Armiston, May 5th, Friday, from our special correspondent. I am authorized to publish an experience altogether unique which has befallen one of the most respected members of the Guelph University, Armiston, and one more over whose peculiar functions at the University give him an unchallenged authority on the matter in question. Professor Higginson, who holds the chair of subliminal psychology in the University, is in the possession, through a recent experience, of undoubted proofs of the existence of the soul of beings of human origin in a state of consciousness of other than terrestrial conditions. What followed, and what his pain dies most weirdly discerned, was the nature of the proof, the impossibility that anyone in Armiston should have heard of that drowned thing upon the French coast, the hour in which Professor Higginson had told a colleague of the experience fully four hours before the discovery itself was made, five hours before the belated Breton telegram had reached the howl from its Paris office. The whole thing was a convincing chain, and with that dreadful knowledge men have that they are in for it, Professor Higginson laid the paper down and wondered how much must be endured before the blessed touch of death. End of Chapter 7 Chapter 8 of The Green Overcoat by Hilaire Belock This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Chapter 8, in which Professor Higginson gets those sweets by the wagon load, and also hears how men are made. Professor Higginson stared at the pile of letters. He remembered that it was a Saturday, a free day. He groaned at such freedom. Fame is like the trumpet she bears. The trumpet has for the civilian an exhilarating sound, for the house near Barracks, too familiar with it, a mechanical one. For the mounted trooper at Reveley it has nothing but a hideous blare. Fame had come to Professor Higginson under her less pleasing aspect. He marveled that so much fame had already risen. He trembled at what the howl might now raise, a paltry lapse of memory, a thing that might happen to anyone, and now all this. Professor Higginson had underestimated his position in the scientific world of guesswork. There are not many professors of psychology. Only three have written books. That his own should have been translated into several languages, had in the past given him pleasure, for he was a provincial man, and in that curious mixture which makes your academic fellow the funny thing he is, the enormity of false pride jostles a very real simplicity. He opened one letter, then another, then another. He intended to answer each laboriously at some length with his own hand. He had said nothing of confidence or of privacy to any man, and these letters were the first fruits of what might be to come. The howl is read by all England before nine. There's a post, comes into Armiston at three in the afternoon. By that post amid a mass of material which it appalled him to observe, and which included every sort of advertisement from every sort of tout, there was shot at the philosopher over two hundred letters of more material kind. He proposed an attempt to answer even these in as much detail as his first batch and with his own hand. His great adventure was becoming a matter of appreciable interest to himself and have to conquer in some moments his anxiety and dread. There came interludes, as he sat that afternoon opening envelope after envelope and scribbling notes for replies, when he really felt as though what he were writing was true, and could describe with glowing precision all that strange psychic phase in which the subconscious self kicks up its heels and gambles at random unrestrained by the burden of objectivity. Two letters in particular he wrote with the utmost care, one to a cabinet minister, an inveterate meddler who dabbled in such things in the intervals of his enormous occupations, the other to an ex-cabinet minister, another inveterate meddler who also dabbled in such things in the intervals of his. Professor Higginson had never written to such great men before. He worked really hard and he composed two masterpieces. Upon the addressing of his first ten envelopes he spent the best part of twenty minutes with books of reference at his side. He wrote courteously and at enormous length to a great lady whose coronet stood out upon the paper like a mountain and whose signature he could yet hardly accept as real, so tremendous a thing did it seem to him that such and one as she should have entered his life. He wrote an extraordinary French to the great specialist at Nancy who had written to him in English. He wrote in English to the great specialist of Leipzig who had written to him in a German he did not understand, but whose signature and European name warranted the nature of the reply, so passed on Saturday's leisure. Then came Sunday morning, and a perfect ocean of post. It was a mass of correspondence which no two secretaries could have dealt with in thirty-six hours and which he left hopelessly upon his table until some expert friend might tell him how such heaps were cleared. His immense work of the day and of the night before in answering the great had left him weary and already disgusted with his new public position. His terrors returned. He had overstrained himself. The room was blurred before him. He wrote from his breakfast and thought to take the air, but the empty Sabbath streets brought him no relief. The Sunday popular papers were hot on his trail. Their great flaring placards stood outside the news shops. Is there a heaven? In letters of foot long and underneath, Professor Higginson says yes, almost knocked him down as they stared at him from one hoarding. In the loud bill outside a chapel he saw his name set forth as subject of the discourse, and before he could snatch away his eyes he had caught the phrase the first witness. All are welcome. He was the first witness. Oh, God! He could not pursue his walk. He felt quite unnecessarily that the mass of the people whom he past noted him and spoke of him among themselves as the author of the great revelation. He wished again for the hundredth time that he had never meddled with a lie. Then Satan jerked a bit. Professor Higginson remembered what the truth would have brought him. He thought of the doc, and then he ceased to wish for anything at all. Just as he was turning back from that via Dolorosa of newspaper placards and sermon notices in the public street, he remembered the mass of correspondence, and at that moment heaven sent him a friend. It was Babcock. The set face and hard, bepuffed eyes seemed to shine on him like a light of doom. The great loose mouth seemed eager and hungry to devour a victim of such eminence. Professor Higginson did not let him take the offensive. Babcock, he almost shouted in his agony. You know about letters and things? Babcock never looked bewildered. He nodded his head determinately and said, Gohan, well, continued Professor Higginson fiercely determined that the great subject should not turn up and talk in his though by steam. Letters, you know about letters, letters, hundreds and hundreds of them, must deal with them, must deal with them this morning, now, he almost screamed. The heavy Babcock rapidly diagnosed the case within his mind. He forbore to exasperate the patient. That's all right, he said, about as soothingly as ogres can. That's all right. What you want is a shorthand, writer. Two, shouted Higginson, still dragging his companion along. But the heavy Babcock had organizing power. What's the good of two? he said contemptuously. You haven't got two mouths, nor two brains either, he added unnecessarily. I want help, said Professor Higginson wildly. Help! What you want, said the heavy Babcock, with a solid mental grip that mastered his victim, is someone to open all those letters and sort them out, one from the other, and see what ought to be said, eh? Kind of thing that ought to be said. Got a telephone? No, yes, no, said Professor Higginson as he reached his door. You ought to have, a man of your position, said Babcock. They had reached the door. I'll come in and help you, he added. He did so. He set to work at once, did Babcock strongly and well. He reproved his unhappy colleague again for not having a telephone, sent out a servant in a cab with the address of a shorthand writer, and of a typist, newspaper people obtainable, of a Sunday, and he ordered a machine. Then he proceeded with tremendous rapidity to slice open the great heap of envelopes with a butter knife. He sorted out their contents at a pace that appalled and yet fascinated the professor of psychology. By the time the assistants had come he had them in four heaps, one, big wigs, two, money, three, refusals, and four, largest of all, trash. Then did he take it upon himself without leave to call out to the shorthand writer. First sentence. I hope you will excuse my dictating this letter. The pressure of my correspondence during the last few days has been, as you may imagine, far too great, et cetera, et cetera. It was a noble, rotund, convenient sentence. It had done work in its time. Higginson listened more fascinated than ever. Thirty copies of that please, said Babcock sharply. Then he condescended to explain. That'll come after the dear sir or madam. Higginson nodded and added faintly. Or my lady or whatever it might be? Yes, said Babcock, suddenly glancing at him with a gimlet look. After the opening thing, whatever it is, my Lord Duke, or my Lord Cardinal, excellence, or my Lord hell to pay, he busied himself again with the papers. Those, he said, shuffling rapidly a body of over forty and suddenly tearing them across. That's trash. Principally lunatics. I can tell them by the hand. Higginson gazed on helplessly. He thought such destruction imprudent, but he said nothing. These went on Babcock, groaning with intelligent interest, and licking his forefinger to deal with the papers. These are refusals. He turned leaf after leaf as though he were counting banknotes and decided upon the lot. Yes, all refusals. May I look? said Professor Higginson a little weakly. Yes, if you like, said Babcock, throwing over the pile without looking up and turning to the next. The professor discovered that his colleague was right enough. They were invitations, all of them, and not invitations, to accept. Over a third were from money lenders. He made a plaintive appeal to keep certain of these last, whose gorgeous crests, ancient names, and scented paper fascinated him. Babcock merely grunted and said, putting his hand upon another much smaller pile. These are money, Higginson, money. He read them out. An offer to write for a magazine. A much more lucrative offer to write for the only daily paper, but to write exclusively, and so forth. That's the one to take, said Babcock. He pulled out a note from an American heading, ticked it, and tossing it to the professor said. Shall I answer it for you? No, said Higginson, trying to be firm. Oh, very well then, said Babcock, dictated yourself. And the professor, with infinite verbiage, gratefully accepted an exclusive article of three thousand words for a sum of two hundred and fifty pounds. It was the turn of the big wigs, and the learned Babcock, with unerring eyes, skipped an actor, and a duchess of equal prominence, and fished out the great invitation. It was the first document upon which he had condescended to linger, and though it was short, he spent some moments over it. His face grew grave. That's a big thing, he said solemnly, handing it over, almost with reverence to the professor of psychology. The professor read a good London address simply stamped upon a good piece of note-paper. He saw a signature, Leonard Barkley, which he vaguely remembered in some connection or other. He read an invitation to deliver an address for the research club, upon any day he might choose, but if possible, during the next week. The research club would take for the occasion the large room at Gortons. That was all. Lucky beast, remembered Babcock, not quite loud enough for the typist to hear, as he fixed the reading Higginson with his eye. The reading Higginson laid down the letter, nodded innately, and said, Well, ought I to take that, Babcock? Who are the research club? Who are the research club? What a man! They make men, said Babcock bitterly. That's what they are. Do you mean to say you don't know? He went on leaning over and talking earnestly in a low tone. Do you mean to say you haven't heard of the research club? Somewhere, I daresay, said Professor Higginson confusedly. But he hadn't. It was a great moment for Babcock. He had not been among the nuts for nothing. Come, said he, like a man who is leading up to a great business, you know who Leonard Barkley is. No. Yes, said Professor Higginson. Just like your telephone sneered, Babcock, you don't know. Well, I'll tell you. Leonard Barkley's the private secretary of Mrs. Camp. And he's the man who started the connoisseurs in Bond Street, and who wrote the book about Colombo. Now do you understand? Professor Higginson dared not say he didn't. But he still looked helpless. Good God, man! Babcock went at him again. He's in the very middle of it. I've known invitations from the RC sent by lots of people, but never by him. Oh! said Higginson, with an appearance of comprehension, though in truth the mysteries of our plutocracy were for him mysteries indeed. Is he in Parliament? Parliament? sneered Babcock. You'll be asking me if he's the Lord Mayor next. He's Leonard Barkley. Oh, curse it. He's it. He's in the middle of the pudding. Why, man alive! He made—and Babcock, with glorious indiscretion, quoted right off the wheel, the Under Secretary for the Post Office, the General-In-Command of the Fifth Army Corps, the Permanent Commissioner of Fine Arts, and the Bishop, a Bishop who really counted. He paused for breath and he emphasized his word slowly as he linked back again. Do you know, Higginson, that Leonard Barkley was the man who let Lord Calfold leave the country? What? said the astonished and provincial professor. What do you mean? Lord Calfold, why? He was at Ormiston, only last May, opening the Bulldog Club. While he's in Assisi now, said Babcock grimly, Assisi in Italy, and he can thank Leonard Barkley that he's not in Dartmoor, Dartmoor in Devonshire. Lord, man, you're in luck. But I don't understand, began Professor Higginson, and then he was silent. Well then I'll tell you, said Babcock, clothing in triumph, though it's difficult to believe you. The research club is Bakewell, and the Prime Minister, and Fiddleworth, and Kapley, and about twenty more like that, and when you talk before it, you don't only talk before it, Higginson, you talk before anything that counts in Europe and happens to be in England at the time. But I never heard of it, said his colleague impotently, with the feeling, as he said it, that that was no great proof of anything. No, answered Babcock grimly, one doesn't hear of those things. He jotted down a few words in pencil on a bit of paper and shoved it over to the Professor. There, he said, copy that on in your own hand, I wouldn't type-write a thing of that sort, if I were you, and write it on the university paper. Professor Higginson peered at the note and read, My dear Mr. Barkley, I shall really be very happy, I think Wednesday a very good night. Shall we call it Wednesday? Unless I hear from you, I shall take it for granted. And at Gortons. The usual hour, I suppose. Professor Higginson gasped. But isn't that very familiar, Babcock, he said doubtfully? Yes it is, said Babcock. That's the point. And I don't know the hour, said Higginson, still hesitating. But I do, said Babcock. It's half past five. Listen, Higginson, and don't be a fool. That's how men are made in this country, do as I tell you. Professor Higginson, wondering vaguely how he could be made, and what happened when a man was so dealt with by those that govern us, took a sheet of the university paper and wrote out carefully that horribly familiar note. He hesitated at the superscription. What is he, he asked. Who, said Babcock, why this mister, this something Barclay? You've got it there, you fool, said Babcock without courtesy. Leonard Barclay, Leonard Barclay Esquire. Simple enough, isn't it? I thought, remembered Professor Higginson, I didn't know, or it was possible that he might have had a father blurtin' out Babcock, not that I know of. No one knows where he comes from, except Mrs. Camp, and she comes from Chicago. With which words, Babcock, the fallen angel, stared before him in reverie, and saw rising upon the background of that dull provincial room, all his old lost paradise, the glories of the Mershauer's house in Camp and Street, and the big day at Cowfold House, and the crowds and the lights that surround our masters and his. Thus it was, that there fell upon this worthy, stilted, and hitherto rather obscure provincial pedant, the great chance of English life, to receive a note from the private secretary of the widow of Mr. Camp of Chicago, and to speak before the research club, where, as it seems, men are made.