. Not without reluctance did he abandon it and return to his plan
of suicide. But he recognized that to supply himself with any large sum
of money would lead to suspicion and that he must begin his new life
almost empty-handed. In his new existence he must work.

For that day and until the next afternoon he remained in town, and in
that time prepared the way for his final exit. At a respectable
lodging-house on West Twenty-third Street, near the ferry, he gave his
name as Henry Hull, and engaged a room. To this room, from a department
store he never before had entered, he shipped a trunk and valise marked
with his new initials and filled with clothes to suit his new estate. To
supply himself with money, at banks, clubs, and restaurants he cashed
many checks for small sums. The total of his collections, from places
scattered over all the city, made quite a comfortable bank roll. And in
his box at the safe-deposit vault he came upon a windfall. It was an
emerald bracelet left him by an eccentric aunt who had lived and died in
Paris. The bracelet he had offered to Jeanne, but she did not like it
and had advised him to turn it into money and, as the aged relative had
wished, spend it upon himself. That was three years since, and now were
it missing Jeanne would believe that at some time in the past he had
followed her advice. So he carried the bracelet away with him. For a
year it would keep a single man in comfort.

His next step was to acquaint himself with the nature of the affliction
on account of which he was to destroy himself. At the public library he
collected a half-dozen books treating of blindness, and selected his
particular malady. He picked out glaucoma, and for his purpose it was
admirably suited. For, so Jimmie discovered, in a case of glaucoma the
oculist was completely at the mercy of the patient. Except to the
patient the disease gave no sign. To an oculist a man might say, "Three
nights ago my eyesight played me the following tricks," and from that
the oculist would know the man was stricken with glaucoma; but the eyes
would tell him nothing.

The next morning to four oculists Jimmie detailed his symptoms. Each
looked grave, and all diagnosed his trouble as glaucoma.

"I knew it!" groaned Jimmie, and assured them sooner than go blind he
would jump into the river. They pretended to treat this as an
extravagance, but later, when each of them was interviewed, he
remembered that Mr. Blagwin had threatened