Tales Of Men And Ghosts

ain a word with the District Attorney: he

o sign of embarrassment. He waved his visitor to a chair, and leaned

ce: "That detective you

sed a depre

the alienist. Why did

mposure. "Because I looked up your s

" Granice furio

been talking to Peter Ascham, and to Denver, and to that little ferret McCarren of the Ex

o tremble. "Why did yo

t's part of my business. Stell is a detec

tself in a long quiver to his facial muscles. He forced a

y at his office he'll show you the record of hundreds of cases like yours, and advise you what tr

by, I kille

almost imperceptible gesture, and a moment later, as if an answer to

e waiting. Drop in on Stell some mo

frequent Granice, who dropped back into a deeper isolation. For a day or two after his visit to Allonby he continued to live in dread of Dr. Stell. Why might not Allonby have deceived

he conditions of their previous meeting. "We have to do that occasionally,

which had occurred to him since his last talk with the physician; but he feared his eagerness

t's a case of brain

ise you to knock off tobacco. Y

massage, gymnastics, travel, or any for

iently. "Oh, I loathe all tha

litics, reform, philanthropy? Some

tand," said Gr

ndreds of cases like yours," the docto

er, who confessed his guilt, and whom no one would believe! Why, there had never been a case like it in the world. Wha

comic opportuni

and understood that he had been carried through the past weeks only by the necessity of constant action. Now his life had once more become a stagnant backwater, and as he stood on

ide from his insuperable physical reluctance, another motive restrained him. He was possessed by the dogged desire to establish the truth of his story. He refused to

kept back engendered others and still others in his brain. His inner self became a humming factory of arguments, and he spent long hours reciting and writing down elaborate statements of his crime, which he constantly retouched and developed. Then gradually his activity languished under the lack of an audience, the sense of being buried beneath deepening drifts of indifference. In a passion of resentment he swore that he would prove himself a murderer, even if he had to commit another crime to

some mocking experiment, the centre of a ring of holiday-makers jeering at a poor creature in its blind dashes against the solid walls of consciousne

seen between the blinders of habit: and in his walk down that narrow vista Granice cut a correct enough figure. To a vision free to follow his whole orbit his story would be more intelligible: it would be easier to convince a chance idler in the street than the trained intelligence

ed in the tortuous motions of the human will; and he began to hate the dull benevolence of the average face. Once or twice, obscurely, allusively, he made a beginning-once sitting down at a man's side in a basement chop-house, another day approaching a lounger on an east-side wharf. But in both cases the premonition of failu

tment, and the critical scrutiny of Flint. His real life was spent in a world so remote from this familiar setting that he sometimes h

g desire which alone attains its end. And still the end eluded him! It would not always, of course-he had full faith in the dark star of his destiny. And he could prove it best by repeating his story

and awkward recoils. He knew now the face he needed, as clearly as if it had come to him in a vision; and not till he found it would he speak. As he walked eastward through th

ce. Its heterogeneous passers always allured him-they were less hurried than in Broadway,

a girl sat alone, and something as definite as the twitch of a cord made him stop before her. He had never dreamed of telling his story to a girl, had hardly looked at the women's faces as they passed. His case was man's work: how could a woman help him? But this girl's face was extraordinary-quiet and wide as a clear evening sky. It suggeste

r face is so extremely intelligent that I feel... I feel it is the fa

d: she rose to her fee

steps after her, and caug

, don't scream, you f

ceman. Instantly he understood that he was being arrested,

ow-you know

had disappeared. But what did he care about her face? It was the policeman wh