But that doesn't begin to answer the question the letters ask, "Who is
it?"
* * * * *
The story of the odd ones is perhaps no more interesting than the story
that might be written of the letters that "tip them off." A story here, of
the harried, buried little figures that make up the swarm of the city and
of the way they glimpse mystery out of the corners of their eyes. Of the
way they pause for a moment on their treadmill to wonder about the silent,
shuffling caricature with its hooded face and its thin fingers groping
under its heavy black cloak.
In another drawer I have stored away letters of another kind. Letters that
the caricature sends me. Queer, marvelous scrawls that remind one of
spiders and bats swinging against white backgrounds. These letters are
seldom signed. They are written almost invariably on cheap blue lined pad
paper.
There are at least two hundred of them. And if you should read them all
through at one sitting you would get a strange sense that this caricature
of the hooded face was talking to you. That the Queer One who shuffles
through the streets was sitting beside you and whispering marvelous things
into your ear.
He writes of the stars, of inventions that will revolutionize man, of
discoveries he has made, of new continents to be visited, of trips to the
moon and of buried races that live beneath the rivers and mountains. He
writes of amazing crimes he has committed, of weird longings that will not
let him sleep. And, too, he writes of strange gods which man should
worship. He pours out his soul in a fantastic scrawl. He says: "One is
all. God looked down and saw ants. The wheel of life turns seven times and
you can see between. You will sometime understand this. But now you have
curtains on your eyes."
Now that you have read all the letters the city becomes a picture. An
office in which sits a well-dressed business man dictating to a pretty
stenographer. They are hard at work, but as they work their eyes glance
furtively out of a tall, thin window. Some one is passing outside the
window. A strange figure, hooded, head down, with his hands moving queerly
under his great black cloak.