Double Trouble | Page 7

moon? He ran his eyes over the news
columns and found them full of matter which was real news, indeed, to
him. President Kruger was reported as about to visit President
McKinley for the purpose of securing mediation in some South African
war; and Senator Lodge had made a speech asking for an army of one
hundred thousand men in, of all places, the Philippine Islands. The
twentieth century, and with it some wonderful events, had stolen on
him as he slept--if, indeed, he had slept--there could be no doubt of
that.
He found his hands trembling again, and, fearing another collapse,
threw himself upon the bed. Then, as drowsiness stole on him, he
thought of the five years gone since last he had yielded to that feeling,
and started up, afraid to sleep. He saw lying on the table the unopened
telegrams, and tore them open. Some referred to sales of oil, and other
business transactions; one was to inform Brassfield that a man named
Alvord would not meet him in New York as promised, and one was in
cipher, and signed "Stevens."
He took from his pocket the letters of Brassfield, and read them. One or
two were invitations to social functions in Bellevale. One was a bill for
dues in a boating-club; another contained the tabulated pedigree of a
horse owned in Kentucky. A very brief one was in the same
handwriting as the missive he had first read, was signed "E. W.," and
merely said that she would be at home in the evening. But most of them
related to the business of the Brassfield Oil Company, and referred to
transactions in oil.
He lay back on the bed again, and thought, thought, thought, beginning

with the furthest stretch of memory, and coming down carefully and
consecutively--to the yawning chasm which had opened in his life and
swallowed up five years. Time and again, he worked down to this abyss,
and was forced to stop. He had heard of loss of memory from illness,
but this was nothing of the sort. He had been tired and nervous that
night at Elm Springs Junction, but not ill; and now he was in robust
health. Perhaps some great fit of passion had torn that obliterating
furrow through his mind. Perhaps in those five years he had become
changed from the man of strict integrity who had so well managed the
Hazelhurst Bank, into the monster who had robbed Eugene Brassfield
of--his clothes, his property, the most dearly personal of his
possessions--these, certainly (for Amidon knew the rule of evidence
which brands as a thief the possessor of stolen goods); and who could
tell of what else? Letters, bags, purses, money--these any vulgar
criminal might have, and bear no deeper guilt than that of theft; but, the
clothes! Mr. Amidon shuddered as his logic carried him on from
deduction to reduction--to murder, and the ghastly putting away of
murder's fruit. Imagination threw its limelight over the horrid
scene--the deep pool or tarn sending up oilily its bubbles of accusation;
the shadowy wood with its bulging mound of earth and leaves swept by
revealing rains and winds; the moldy vat of corrosive liquid eating
away the damning evidence; the box with its accursed stains, shipped
anywhere away from the fatal spot, by boat or ship, to be relentlessly
traced back--and he shivered in fearful wonder as to how the crime had
been committed. In some way, he felt sure, Eugene Brassfield's body
must have been removed from those natty clothes of his, before Florian
Amidon could have put them on, and with them donned the personality
of their former owner.
And here entered a mystery deeper still--the strange deception he
seemed to impose on the dead man's acquaintances. And this filled him,
somehow, with the most abject dread and fear. Brassfield seemed to
have been a well-known man; for porters and clerks in New York do
not call the obscure countryman by name. To step out on the street was,
perhaps, to run into the very arms of some one who would penetrate the
disguise. Yet he could not long remain in this room; his very
retirement--any extraordinary behavior (and how did he know

Brassfield's ordinary courses?)--would soon advertise his presence.
Amidon walked to the window and peered down into the street. His
eyes traveled to the opposite windows, and finally in the blind stare of
absent-mindedness became fixed on a gold-and-black sign which he
began stupidly spelling out, over and over. "Madame le Claire," it read,
"Clairvoyant and Occultist." Not an idea was associated in his mind
with the sign until the word "mystery," "mystery," began sounding in
his ears--naturally enough, one would say, in the circumstances. Then
the letters of the word floated before his eyes; and finally he
consciously