Read the book: «The Wiles of the Wicked», page 11

Chapter Twenty
How Many Yesterdays?

“Now,” I said, turning to Gedge, “perhaps you will show me over this new domain of mine. They seem to be pretty comfortable quarters, at any rate.”

He looked at me strangely.

“You surely don’t mean, sir, that you wish me to show you over your own house?” he said with incredulity.

“Of course I do,” I answered. “I’ve never been over it yet, and I think I may as well embrace the opportunity now.”

“But hadn’t you better go to your room and rest? It will surely do you good. I’ll ring for Rayner, the valet.” He spoke as though solicitous of my welfare.

“I want no valets, neither do I require rest,” I answered impatiently. “I mean to fathom this mystery.”

“But pardon me,” he said deferentially, “there is no mystery, as far as I can see. You accidentally struck your head against the statue while passing through the drawing-room, and were rendered unconscious. The blow has, according to the doctor, impaired your mental capacity a little. In a few days you’ll be all right again. Poor Mrs Heaton! – she’s awfully upset.”

“I will not have her called Mrs Heaton!” I cried in indignation. “Understand that! I have no wife – and a hag like that I certainly would never marry.” He raised his eyebrows with a gesture of regret, sighed, but hazarded no remark.

“Come,” I said, “show me over the place. It will be a most interesting visit, I’m sure.” And I laughed, reflecting upon my extraordinary position, one absolutely unparalleled in man’s history.

“But before doing so will you not sign one or two cheques?” he urged, glancing at his watch. “The postman will call for the letters in half an hour, and they must be dispatched to-day.”

“What cheques?”

“There are six,” he answered, taking out a large cheque-book and opening it. “I’ve already made them out, if you will kindly sign them.”

I glanced at them. All six were for large amounts, each considerably over a thousand pounds.

“They relate to business transactions, all of which are exceedingly good bargains,” he explained.

“Well,” I said, laughing again. “I’ve never before signed cheques for such big amounts as these. But here goes, if you wish. Whether they’ll be honoured is quite another thing.”

And I took up a pen and appended my signature to each, while he placed one by one in envelopes ready directed to receive them.

“Now,” he said at last, “if you really wish me to take you round I’ll do so, but the whole thing seems so droll and absurd that I hope, sir, you’ll excuse my doubts as to your sanity.”

“Well, why do you think I’m insane?” I asked, looking straight at him. “Do I look like a madman?”

“Not at all. With your head swathed in those bandages, you look like a man who’s received a serious injury.”

“Of course, that confounded old charlatan Britten put forward the suggestion that I’m not in my right mind!” I said. “But I tell you quite calmly, and without fear of contradiction – indeed, I could swear upon oath – that never in my life have I entered this place or set eyes upon you or upon that painted old girl before to-day. Now, if you were in my place, surely you would resent, being called husband by a woman whom you don’t know from Adam; you wouldn’t relish being condemned as a lunatic by an idiotic old country quack, and being imposed upon all round by persons in whom you have not the slightest interest.”

His face relaxed into a smile.

“If I may be permitted to advise,” he said, “I think it best not to discuss the matter further at present. A solution must present itself before long. Meanwhile your intellect will be rendered the clearer by repose.”

“I’ve already told you that I don’t intend to rest until I’ve extricated myself from this absurdly false position,” I said determinedly. “I feel absolutely certain that I’ve been mistaken for some one of the same name.”

He shrugged his shoulders. He was evidently a shrewd fellow, this man who said he was my secretary, and was apparently a very confidential servant.

“I’d like to know what to reply to Mawson’s cable,” he said. “You really ought to take some notice of such a marvellous stroke of good fortune. His discovery means fabulous wealth for you as holder of the concession.”

“My dear sir,” I said, “for mercy’s sake don’t bother me about this fellow and his confounded pans. Reply just as you like. You seem to know all about it. I don’t – nor do I want to know.”

“But in a case like this I do not care to act on my own discretion alone,” he protested. “They are evidently awaiting a reply in Dawson City.”

“Let them wait,” I said. “I don’t want to bother my head over matters in which I can have no possible concern. This alleged matrimonial alliance of mine is of far more importance to me than all the gold in the Klondyke.”

“Well, the lady is your wife, so why worry further about it?” he said.

“And how do you know, pray?”

“Because I was present at the ceremony.”

I looked at him for a moment, unable to utter further words.

“I suppose you’ll tell me next that you were my secretary in my bachelor days?” I said at last.

“Certainly I was.”

“And you say that you were actually present at the church, and saw me married?” I cried, absolutely incredulous.

“I was. You were married at St. Andrew’s, Wells Street. It was a smart wedding, too, for Mrs Fordyce was very well known in society, and had a large circle of friends.”

“Fordyce?” I echoed, puzzled.

“Yes, that was Mrs Heaton’s name before her marriage with you.”

“Then she was a widow?” I gasped.

He nodded in the affirmative.

I groaned. The affair grew more puzzling now that he declared himself an actual witness of my matrimonial misfortune.

But how could such a thing have taken place without my knowledge? It was impossible. The mystery, like the strange incidents which had preceded this remarkable situation in which I found myself, grew more and more inexplicable each hour.

We went forth, together, passing from room to room through the great country mansion. The place was handsome, of rather modern type, furnished glaringly in the manner which bespoke the parvenu. It possessed no mellow, time-worn appearance, as did the dear old Manor House beside the Severn. The furniture and hangings were too apparently of the Tottenham Court Road type, and the art displayed was that of the art furnisher given carte blanche to furnish with the newest and most fashionable fancies in the matter of wallpapers, dadoes, cornices, and art-pottery. There were art-carpets and art-curtains, art-cupboards and art-chairs, art-china and art-chintzes. Art was everywhere in painful enamel and impossible greens. There were pictures, too, but different, indeed, to the long row of noble faces with their ruffles and doublets and their arms painted on shields in the corners that looked down so solemnly in the great hall at Heaton. The pictures in that modern mansion were of the queue-de-siècle French school, daubs by the miscalled impressionists, some being rather too chic to be decent.

That a large amount of money had been expended upon the place I could not doubt, but the effect was that of dazzling the gaze by colour, and nowhere seemed there a good, comfortable old-fashioned sitting-room. All the apartments were arranged to please the eye, and not for personal comfort. The house was just the kind that a man suddenly successful in the city might set up in the vain endeavour to develop into a country gentleman; for to become such is the ideal of every silk-hatted business man, whether he trades in stocks or stockings.

“That I should be compelled to show you over your own house is, to say the least, very amusing,” said Gedge, as we were passing up the grand staircase. “If people were told of this they wouldn’t believe it possible.”

“I myself don’t believe what you tell me is possible,” I remarked. “But who gave orders for this furniture?”

“You did.”

“And who chose it – approved of the designs, and all that sort of thing?”

“You certainly did,” he answered. “Some of the ideas were, of course, Mrs Heaton’s.”

“I thought so. I don’t believe myself capable of such barbaric taste as those awful blues and greens in the little sitting-room.”

“The morning-room you mean.”

“I suppose so. The whole place is like a furniture show-room – this style complete, thirty-five guineas, and so on. You know the sort of thing I mean.”

He smiled in amusement at my words.

“Your friends all admire the place,” he remarked.

“What friends?”

“Sir Charles Stimmel, Mr Larcombe, Lady Fraser, and people of that class.”

“I never heard of them in all my life. Who are they?” I inquired, interested.

“Friends of yours. They visit here often enough. You surely ought to know them. Lady Fraser is your wife’s dearest friend.”

“Fraser?” I said reflectively. “The only Fraser I know is a baker in Clare Market, who supplies my old servant, Mrs Parker, with bread.” Then, after a pause, I added, “And you say that these people are friends of mine? Have I many friends?”

“Lots. A rich man has always plenty of good-humoured acquaintances.”

“They like to come down here for a breath of country air, I suppose, eh?” I laughed.

“That’s about it,” he answered. “A good many of them are not very sincere in their friendship, I fear. The man who has money, lives well, keeps a good table, and has choice wines in his cellar need never be at a loss for genial companions.”

“You seem to be a bit of a philosopher, my friend.” I remarked.

He smiled knowingly.

“I haven’t acted as your secretary without learning a few of the crooked ways of the world.”

“What?” I exclaimed. “Don’t I always act honestly, then?” This was something entirely new.

“Nobody can be honest in finance.”

“Well,” I said, resenting his imputation, “I wasn’t aware that I had ever swindled a person of sixpence in my life.”

“Sixpences in such sums as they deal in at Winchester House don’t count. It’s the thousands.”

We passed a couple of gaping maid-servants in long-stringed caps, who stood aside, looking at me in wonder. No doubt the news that a demented man was in the house had reached the servants’ hall. I was, in fact, on show to the domestics.

“Then you mean to imply that these financial dealings of mine – of which, by the way, I have no knowledge whatsoever – are not always quite straight?” I said, as we walked together down a long carpeted corridor. He looked at me in hesitation.

“It’s, of course, business,” he answered – “sharp business. I don’t mean to imply that the dealings at Winchester House are any more unfair than those of any other financier in the City; but sometimes, you know, there’s just a flavour of smartness about them that might be misconstrued by a clever counsel in a criminal court.”

“What?” I cried, halting and glaring at him. “Now, be frank with me, Gedge. Tell me plainly, have I ever swindled anybody?”

“Certainly not,” he said, laughing. “Why, it’s this very smartness that has made you what you are to-day – a millionaire. If you had not been very wide awake and shrewd you’d have been ruined long ago.”

“Then, I suppose, I’m well known in the city, eh?”

“Your name’s as well known as Bennett’s clock, and your credit stands as high as any one’s between Ludgate Hill and Fenchurch Street.”

“Extraordinary!” I said. “What you tell me sounds like some remarkable fairy tale.”

“The balance at your banker’s is sufficient proof that what I say is truth,” he remarked. “There may be a good many fairy tales in certain prospectuses, but there certainly is none in your financial soundness.”

We wandered on from room to room. There must, I think, have been quite thirty sleeping apartments, guests’ rooms, etc, all furnished in that same glaring style, that greenery-yellow abomination miscalled art.

“The next room,” explained my secretary, as we approached the end of the corridor, “is Mrs Heaton’s boudoir. I expect she’s in there. I saw Dalton, her maid, enter a moment ago.”

“Oh, for Heaven’s sake, leave her alone!” I said, turning at once on my heel. I had no wish to meet that awful rejuvenated hag again.

I fancy Gedge smiled, but if he did he was very careful to hide his amusement from me. He was, without doubt, a very well-trained secretary.

The thought of Mabel Anson crossed my mind. All the recollections of the dinner on the previous night, and the startling discoveries I subsequently made recurred to me at that moment, and I felt dazed and bewildered. This painted and powdered person could surely not be my wife, when I loved Mabel Anson with all my soul! Only yesterday I had sat at her side at dinner, and had felt the pressure of her soft, delicate hand upon mine. No; it could not be that I was actually married. Such a thing was utterly impossible, for surely no man could go through the marriage ceremony without knowing something about it.

Hickman’s treachery angered me. Why, I wondered, had he enticed me to his rooms in order to make that extraordinary attempt upon my life? The wound upon my head was undoubtedly due to the blow he had dealt me. The theory that I had accidentally knocked my head against the marble statue and broken it was, I felt assured, only one of that fool Britten’s brilliant ideas with which he misled his too-confiding patients. If this were so, then all the incidents subsequent to my recovery of consciousness were part of the conspiracy which had commenced on the previous night with Hickman’s attempt.

We descended the stairs, passing the footman Gill, who with a bow, said —

“I hope, sir, you feel better.”

“A little,” I answered. “Bring me a whisky and soda to the library.”

And the man at once disappeared to do my bidding. “I suppose he think’s I’m mad,” I remarked. “This is a very remarkable ménage, to say the least.”

In the great hall, as I walked towards the library, was a long mirror, and in passing I caught sight of my own figure in it. I stopped, and with a loud cry of wonder and dismay stood before it, glaring at my own reflection.

The bandages about my head gave me a terribly invalid appearance, but reflected by that glass I saw a sight which struck me dumb with amazement. I could not believe my eyes; the thing staggered belief.

On the morning before I had shaved as usual, but the glass showed that I now wore a well cut, nicely reddish-brown beard!

My face seemed to have changed curiously. I presented an older appearance than on the day before. My hair seemed to have lost its youthful lustre, and upon my brow were three distinct lines – the lines of care.

I felt my beard with eager hands. Yes, there was no mistake. It was there, but how it had grown was inconceivable.

Beyond, through the open door, I saw the brilliant sunlight, the green lawn, the bright flowers and cool foliage of the rustling trees.

It was summer. Yet only yesterday was chill, dark winter, with threatening snow.

Had I been asleep like Rip Van Winkle in the legend? “Tell me,” I cried excitedly, turning to the man standing behind me, “what’s the day of the month to-day?”

“The seventeenth of July.”

“July?” I echoed. “And what year is this?”

“Why, eighteen hundred and ninety-six, of course.”

“Ninety-six!” I gasped, standing glaring at him in blank amazement. “Ninety-six?”

“Certainly. Why?”

“Am I really losing my senses?” I cried, dismayed. “Yesterday was six years ago!”

Chapter Twenty One
Gedge Tells the Truth

“Yesterday six years ago!” he echoed, looking at me in blank bewilderment. “What do you mean?”

“I mean that if what you’ve told me is really the truth,” I cried, agape in wonder, “then it is the most astounding thing I’ve ever heard of. Are you absolutely certain of the date?”

“Certain? Why, of course.”

“Of the year, I mean?”

“Positive. It’s eighteen ninety-six.”

“For how long, then, have you been my secretary?” I inquired.

“Nearly five years.”

“And how long have I lived in this place?”

“For nearly four.”

“And that woman,” I demanded, breathlessly – “is she actually my wife?”

“Most certainly,” he answered.

I stood stupefied, stunned by this amazing statement.

“But,” I protested, lost in wonder, “yesterday was years ago. How do you account for that? Are you certain that you’re not deceiving me?”

“I’ve told you the absolute truth,” he responded. “On that I stake my honour.”

I stood aghast, glaring at my reflection in the mirror, open-mouthed, as though I gazed upon some object supernatural. My personal appearance had certainly changed, and that in itself convinced me that there must be some truth in this man Gedge’s statement. I was older, a trifle stouter than before, I think, and my red-brown beard seemed to give my face a remarkably grotesque appearance. I had always hated beards, and considered them a relic of prehistoric barbarity. It was surprising that I should now have grown one.

“Then according to your account I must have spent yesterday here – actually in this house?”

“Why, of course you did,” he responded. “We were engaged the greater part of the day over Laffan’s affair. Walter Halliburton, the mining engineer, came down to see you, and we were together all the afternoon. He left for London at five.”

“And where did I dine?”

“Here. With Mrs Heaton.”

“Don’t speak of her as Mrs Heaton!” I cried in anger. “She’s not my wife, and I will not have her regarded as such.”

He gave his shoulders a slight shrug.

“Now, look here, Mr Gedge,” I said, speaking for the first time with confidence. “If you were in my place, awakening suddenly to find that six years of your life had vanished in a single night, and that you were an entirely different person to that of twelve hours ago, what would you believe?”

He looked at me with a somewhat sympathetic expression upon his thin features.

“Well, I don’t know what I should think.” Then he added, “But surely such a thing can’t be possible.”

“It is possible,” I cried. “It has happened to me. I tell you that last night was six years ago.”

He turned from me, as though he considered further argument unavailing.

My head reeled. What he had told me was utterly incredible. It seemed absolutely impossible that six whole years should have passed without my knowledge; that I should have entered upon a business of which I had previously known nothing; that I should have rapidly amassed a fortune; and, most of all, that I should have married that powdered and painted woman who had presented herself as my wife. Yet such were the unaccountable facts which this man Gedge asked me to believe.

He saw that I was extremely dubious about the date, therefore he led me back to the library, where there hung upon the wall a large calendar, which quickly convinced me.

Six; years had really elapsed since yesterday.

In that vexing and perplexing present I reflected upon the puzzling past. That happy dinner with Mabel at the Boltons, the subsequent discoveries in that drawing-room where she had sat at the piano calmly playing; her soft words of tenderness, and the subsequent treachery of that dog-faced man Hickman, all passed before me with extraordinary vividness. Yet, in truth, all had happened long ago.

Alas! I was not like other men. To the practical, level-headed man of affairs “To-day” may be sufficient, all-engrossing; but to the very large majority – a majority which, I believe, includes also many of the practical, the business of to-day admits of constant pleasant excursions into the golden mists of “long ago,” and many happy flights to the rosy heights of “some day.” Most of those who read this strange story of my life will remember with a melancholy affection, with a pain that is more soothing than many pleasures, the house wherein they were born, or at any rate the abode in which they passed the earlier years of their lives. The agonising griefs of childhood, the disappointments, the soul-racking terrors, mellowed by the gentle touch of passing years, have no sting for our mature sensibilities, but come back to us now with a pathos that is largely tinctured with amusement.

I stood there reviewing the past, puzzled, utterly unable to account for it. Age, the iconoclast, had shattered most of the airy idols which my youth had set up in honour of itself. I had lost six of the most precious years of my life – years that I had not lived.

Yet this man before me declared most distinctly that I had lived them; that I had enjoyed a second existence quite apart and distinct from my own self. Incredible though it seemed, yet it became gradually impressed upon me that what this man Gedge had told me was the actual, hideous truth, and that I had really lived and moved and prospered throughout those six unknown years, while my senses had at the same time remained dormant, and I had thus been utterly unconscious of existence.

But could such a thing be? As a prosaic man of the world I argued, as any one in his right mind would argue, that such a thing was beyond the bounds of possibility. Nevertheless, be it how it might, the undisputed fact remained that I had lapsed into unconsciousness on that winter’s night six years before, and had known absolutely nothing of my surroundings until I found myself lying upon the floor of the drawing-room of what was alleged to be my country house.

Six years out of a man’s life is a large slice. The face of the world changes considerably in that space of time. I found myself living a life which was so artificial and incongruous to my own tastes as to appear utterly unreal. Yet, as I made further inquiry of this man Gedge, every moment that passed showed me plainly that what he had said was the truth.

He related to me the routine of my daily life, and I stood listening agape in wonder. He told me things of which I had no knowledge; of my own private affairs, and of my business profits; he took big leather-bound ledgers from the great green-painted safe, and showed me formidable sums entered therein, relating, he explained, to the transactions at the office up in London. Some documents he showed me, large official-looking sheets with stamps and seals and signatures, which he said were concessions obtained from a certain foreign Government, and opened my private letter-book, exhibiting letters I had actually written with my own hand, but without having any knowledge of having done so.

These revelations took away my breath.

It could not be mere loss of memory from which I was suffering. I had actually lived a second and entirely different life to that I had once led in Essex Street. Apparently I had become a changed man, had entered business, had amassed a fortune – and had married.

Assuredly, I reflected, I could never have been in my right senses to have married that angular person with the powdered cheeks. That action, in itself, was sufficient to convince me that my brain had been unbalanced during those six lost years.

Alone, I stood, without a single sympathiser – without a friend.

How this astounding gap in my life had been produced was absolutely beyond explanation. I tried to account for it, but the reader will readily understand that the problem was, to me, utterly inexplicable. I, the victim of the treachery of that man Hickman, had fallen unconscious one night, and had awakened to discover that six whole years had elapsed, and that I had developed into an entirely different person. It was unaccountable, nay, incredible.

I think I should have grown confidential towards Gedge were it not that he apparently treated me as one whose mind was wandering. He believed, and perhaps justly so, that my brain had been injured by the accidental blow. To him, of course, it seemed impossible that I, his master, should know nothing of my own affairs. The ludicrousness of the situation was to me entirely apparent, yet what could I do to avert it?

By careful questions I endeavoured to obtain from him some facts regarding my past.

“You told me,” I said, “that I have many friends. Among them are there any persons named Anson?”

“Anson?” he repeated reflectively. “No, I’ve never heard the name.”

“Or Hickman?”

He shook his head.

“I lived once in Essex Street, Strand,” I said. “Have I been to those chambers during the time – the five years you have been in my service?”

Never, to my knowledge.

“Have I ever visited a house in The Boltons, at Kensington?”

“I think not,” he responded.

“Curious! Very curious!” I observed, thinking deeply of the graceful, dark-eyed Mabel whom I had loved six years before, and who was now lost to me for ever.

“Among my friends is there a man named Doyle?” I inquired, after a pause.

“Doyle? Do you mean Mr Richard Doyle, the war correspondent?”

“Certainly,” I cried excitedly. “Is he back?”

“He is one of your friends, and has often visited here,” Gedge replied.

“What is his address? I’ll wire to him at once.”

“He’s in Egypt. He left London last March, and has not yet returned.”

I drew a long breath. Dick had evidently recovered from fever in India, and was still my best friend, although I had had no knowledge of it.

What, I wondered, had been my actions in those six years of unconsciousness? Mine were indeed strange thoughts at that moment. Of all that had been told me I was unable to account for anything. I stood stunned, confounded, petrified.

For knowledge of what had transpired during those intervening years, or of my own career and actions during that period, I had to rely upon the statements of others. My mind during all that time had, it appeared, been a perfect blank, incapable of receiving any impression whatsoever.

Nevertheless, when I came to consider how I had in so marvellous a manner established a reputation in the City, and had amassed the sum now lying at my bankers, I reflected that I could not have accomplished that without the exercise of considerable tact and mental capacity. I must, after all, have retained shrewd senses, but they had evidently been those of my other self – the self who had lived and moved as husband of that woman who called herself Mrs Heaton.

“Tell me,” I said, addressing Gedge again, “has my married life been a happy one?”

He looked at me inquiringly.

“Tell me the truth,” I urged. “Don’t conceal anything from me, for I intend to get at the bottom of this mystery.”

“Well,” he said, with considerable hesitation, “scarcely what one might call happy, I think.”

“Ah, I understand,” I said. “I know from your tone that you sympathise with me, Gedge.”

He nodded without replying. Strange that I had never known this man until an hour ago, and yet I had grown so confidential with him. He seemed to be the only person who could present to me the plain truth.

Those six lost years were utterly puzzling. I was as one returned from the grave to find his world vanished, and all things changed.

I tried to reflect, to see some ray of light through the darkness of that lost period, but to me it seemed utterly non-existent. Those years, if I had really lived them, had melted away and left not a trace behind. The events of my life prior to that eventful night when I had dined at The Boltons had no affinity to those of the present. I had ceased to be my old self, and by some inexplicable transition, mysterious and unheard of, I had, while retaining my name, become an entirely different man.

Six precious years of golden youth had vanished in a single night. All my ideals, all my love, all my hope, nay, my very personality, had been swept away and effaced for ever.

“Have I often visited Heaton – my own place?” I inquired, turning suddenly to Gedge.

“Not since your marriage, I believe,” he answered. “You have always entertained some curious dislike towards the place. I went up there once to transact some business with your agent, and thought it a nice, charming old house.”

“Ay, and so it is,” I sighed, remembering the youthful days I had spent there long ago. All the year round was sunshine then, with the most ravishing snow-drifts in winter, and ice that sparkled in the sun so brilliantly that it seemed almost as jolly and frolicsome as the sunniest of sunlit streams, dancing and shimmering over the pebbles all through the cloudless summer. Did it ever rain in those old days long ago? Why, yes; and what splendid times I used to have on those occasions – toffee-making in the schoolroom, or watching old Dixon, the gamekeeper, cutting gun-wads in the harness-room.

And I had entertained a marked dislike to the place! All my tastes and ideas during those blank years had apparently become inverted. I had lived and enjoyed a world exactly opposite to my own – the world of sordid money-making and the glaring display of riches. I had, in a word, aped the gentleman.

There was a small circular mirror in the library, and before it I stood, marking every line upon my face, the incredible impress of forgotten years.

“It is amazing, incredible!” I cried, heart-sick with desire to penetrate the veil of mystery that enshrouded that long period of unconsciousness. “All that you have told me, Gedge, is absolutely beyond belief. There must be some mistake. It is impossible that six years can have passed without my knowledge.”

“I think,” he said, “that, after all, Britten’s advice should be followed. You are evidently not yourself to-day, and rest will probably restore your mental power to its proper calibre.”

“Bah!” I shouted angrily. “You still believe I’m mad. I tell you I’m not. I’ll prove to you that I’m not.”

“Well,” he remarked, quite calmly, “no sane man could be utterly ignorant of his own life. It doesn’t stand to reason that he could.”

“I tell you I’m quite as sane as you are,” I cried. “Yet I’ve been utterly unconscious these six whole years.”

“Nobody will believe you.”

“But I swear it to be true,” I protested. “Since the moment when consciousness left me in that house in Chelsea I have been as one dead.”

He laughed incredulously. The slightly confidential tone in which I had spoken had apparently induced him to treat me with indifference. This aroused my wrath. I was in no mood to argue whether or not I was responsible for my actions.

“A man surely can’t be unconscious, while at the same time he transacts business and lives as gaily as you live,” he laughed.

“Then you impute that all I’ve said is untrue, and is due merely to the fact that I’m a trifle demented, eh?”