FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   50   51   52   53   54   55   56   57   58   59   60   61   62   63   64   65   66   67   68   69   70   71   72   73   74  
75   76   77   78   79   80   81   82   83   84   >>  
he, "this is the queerest stuff I've heard for a long time! This is hallucination with a vengeance! I don't like to apply such a tomfool word to anything, but observe how all this has come about. An excellent old gentleman, who has been dining out or something, has a glimpse at night, on a crowded pavement, of a man who looks like a friend of his youth. Very well. The excellent old gentleman tells you of that, and it impresses you. _You_ walk on the same pavement the next evening--I won't emphasise the fact of its being after dinner, though I daresay it was--" "It was." "--_You_ have a glimpse of a man who looks--well, something like me; and you instantly conclude, 'Ah! the Courtney person--the friend of Dr Rippon's youth!--and, surely, some relative of my friend Julius!' Next day this hospital case turns up, and because the description of its author, given by more or less unobservant persons, fits the person you saw, _argal_, you jump to the conclusion that the three are one! Is your conclusion clear upon the evidence? Is it inevitable? Is it necessary? Is it not forced?" "Well," began Lefevre. "It is bad detective business," broke in Julius, "though it may be good friendship. You have thought there was trouble in this for me, and you wished to give me warning of it. But--_que diable vas-tu faire dans cette galere?_ You are the best friend in the world, and whenever I am in trouble--and who knows? who knows? 'Man is born unto trouble, as the sparks fly upward'--I may ask of you both your friendship and your skill. One thing I ask of you here: don't speak of me as you see me now, thus miserably moved, to any one! Now I must go. Good-bye." And before Lefevre could find another word, Julius had opened the door and was gone. "If it moves him like that," said the doctor to himself, through his bewilderment, "there must be something worse in it--God forgive me for thinking so!--than I have ever imagined." Chapter VII. Contains a Love Interlude. Next day Lefevre learned that the police had been again baffled in their part of the inquiry. The detective had contrived to trace his man--though not till the morning after the event--to the St Pancras Hotel, where he had dined in private, and gone to bed early, and whence he had departed on foot before any one was astir, to catch, it was surmised, the first train. But wherever he had gone, it was just as in the former case: from the time the hotel door ha
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   50   51   52   53   54   55   56   57   58   59   60   61   62   63   64   65   66   67   68   69   70   71   72   73   74  
75   76   77   78   79   80   81   82   83   84   >>  



Top keywords:

friend

 
trouble
 
Lefevre
 

Julius

 
friendship
 
conclusion
 
person
 

detective

 

gentleman

 

glimpse


pavement
 

excellent

 

opened

 

sparks

 
upward
 
miserably
 

inquiry

 

departed

 

contrived

 
police

baffled
 

Pancras

 

morning

 

private

 
learned
 

Interlude

 

bewilderment

 
doctor
 

forgive

 
thinking

Contains
 

surmised

 

Chapter

 

imagined

 

evidence

 
evening
 

impresses

 

crowded

 

emphasise

 
Courtney

Rippon

 

conclude

 

dinner

 

daresay

 
instantly
 

hallucination

 

vengeance

 
queerest
 

tomfool

 

dining