Double Trouble | Page 2

in case I
should prove honest, and need to hear from you, you'll leave your
address?"
Mr. Amidon[1] frowned and made a gesture expressive of nervousness.
"No," said he, in a high-pitched and querulous tone. "No! I want to see
if this business owns me, or if I own it. Why should you need to

communicate with me? Whenever I'm off a day you always sign
everything; and I shall be gone but a day on any given date this time; so
it's only the usual thing, after all. I shall not leave any address; and
don't look for me until I step in at that door! Good-by."
And he walked out of the bank, went home, and began looking over for
the last time his cameras, films, tripods and the other paraphernalia of
his fad.
"This habit of running off alone, Florian," said Mrs. Baggs, his sister,
housekeeper, general manager, and the wife of Baggs--his confidential
clerk and silent partner--"gives me an uneasy feeling. If you had only
done as I wanted you to do, you'd have had some one----"
"Now, Jennie," said he, "we have settled that question a dozen times,
and we can't go over it again if I am to catch the 4:48 train. Keep your
eye on the men, and keep Baggs up in the collar, and see that Wilkes
and Ranger get their just dues. I must have rest, Jennie; and as for the
wife, why, there'll be more some day for this purely speculative family
of yours if we---- By the way, there's the whistle at Anderson's crossing.
Good-by, my dear!"
On the 4:48 train, at least until it had aged into the 7:30 or 8:00, Mr.
Florian Amidon, banker, and most attractive unmarried man of
Hazelhurst, was not permitted to forget that his going away was an
important event. The fact that he was rich, from the viewpoint of the
little mid-western town, unmarried and attractive, easily made his
doings important, had nothing remarkable followed. But he had
exceptional points as a person of consequence, aside from these. His
father had been a scholar, and his mother so much of a grande dame as
to have old worm-eaten silks and laces with histories. The Daughters of
the American Revolution always went to the Amidons for ancient
toggery for their eighteenth-century costumes--and checks for their
deficits. The family even had a printed genealogy. Moreover, Florian
had been at the head of his class in the high school, had gone through
the family alma mater in New England, and been finished in Germany.
Hazelhurst, therefore, looked on him as a possession, and thought it
knew him.

We, however, may confide to the world that Hazelhurst knew only his
outer husk, and that Mr. Amidon was inwardly proud of his
psychological hinterland whereof his townsmen knew nothing. To
Hazelhurst his celibacy was the banker's caution, waiting for something
of value in the matrimonial market: to him it was a bashful and
palpitant--almost maidenly--expectancy of the approach of some
radiant companion of his soul, like those which spoke to him from the
pages of his favorite poets.
This was silly in a mere business man! If found out it would have
justified a run on the bank.
To Hazelhurst he was a fixed and integral part of their society: to
himself he was a galley-slave chained to the sweep of percentages,
interest-tables, cash-balances, and lines of credit, to whom there came
daily the vision of a native Arcadia of art, letters and travel. It was good
business to allow Hazelhurst to harbor its illusions; it was excellent
pastime and good spiritual nourishment for Amidon to harbor his; and
one can see how it may have been with some quixotic sense of seeking
adventure that he boarded the train.
What followed was so extraordinary that everything he said or did was
remembered, and the record is tolerably complete. He talked with
Simeon Woolaver, one of his tenants, about the delinquent rent, and
gave Simeon a note to Baggs relative to taking some steers in
settlement. This was before 5:17, at which time Mr. Woolaver got off
at Duxbury.
"He was entirely normal," said Simeon during the course of his
examination--"more normal than I ever seen him; an' figgered the
shrink on them steers most correct from his standp'int, on a business
card with a indelible pencil. He done me out of about eight dollars an' a
half. He was exceedin'ly normal--up to 5:17!"
Mr. Amidon also encountered Mrs. Hunter and Miss Hunter in the
parlor-car, immediately after leaving Duxbury. Miss Hunter was on her
way to the Maine summer resorts with the Senator Fowlers, to whom
Mrs. Hunter was taking her. Mrs. Hunter noticed nothing peculiar in his

behavior, except the pointed manner in which he passed the chair by