FAILURE
Kennedy found Locke, and brought him to that room, where the young
southpaw was met by Stillman, while the doctor and landlord looked on.
“Of course you remember me,” said the reporter, wringing Locke’s
unresponsive hand. “You know how I got the proof on Elgin, and showed
him up to Brennan. I knew you’d make good in the Big League, and I
never lost a chance to say so.”
“It’s mighty good of you to talk like this,” returned Locke, “but you
wouldn’t if you knew how you confuse me. If I’m the man you think me to
be, how is it I only remember that my name is Robert Stranger, and that
on account of my health I came out into the country to get a job on a
farm?”
“Pink Kelly, a card sharp, crook, and con man, was talking to you just
before that railroad smash-up. Sometimes Kelly went by the name of Bob
Stranger. He was killed, but you seemed to escape without as much as a
scratch.”
“I don’t remember it,” persisted Locke, shaking his head. “If I wasn’t
hurt in that smash-up, what made me so twisted? For I’m twisted, or you
are, every one of you.”
“Perhaps,” said Doctor Hetner, “the railroad smash simply completed
what was gradually taking place before that. I saw you on that smoking
car. I spoke to you, but you didn’t recognize me. I thought you were
lying. Now I’m inclined to believe you were honest.”
“Thank you,” said Lefty, on whose forehead little beads of perspiration
were standing thickly. “It’s a rotten thing for a man to get twisted
the way I am. I’ve tried to remember, but the more I try the less I can
recall.”
“There are reasons,” said the doctor, “why you should strive to recall
the past.”
“The principal reason,” said the reporter, “is Miss Janet Harting.
Don’t you remember her, Lefty?”
Locke brushed his hand almost fiercely across his forehead. “No,” he
answered, “I don’t remember her.”
“I have a notion,” said Stillman, “that you are engaged to her, though
there was a quarrel or something of the sort, brought about by your
being seen with Virginia Collier――old man Collier’s swell daughter. I
don’t know just how it came round, but Miss Harting failed to accept
your explanations, if you made any. That broke you up. Now can’t you
remember?”
“No, not a single thing!” answered Lefty, in deep distress. “It’s all
as if it never happened to me.”
“If you saw the girl!” cried Stillman. “Doctor, where’s that photograph
you took from me?”
“Here it is,” said Hetner, handing it over.
The reporter placed it in the hands of Locke, who gazed long and
hard at the pictured likeness of one who had seemed to him the most
beautiful of all girls.
“It’s no use,” he declared, after some minutes of tense and breathless
silence. “If I ever saw her, I have no recollection of it, and
therefore I might as well never have seen her. It drives me desperate,
trying to remember, and I must stop――”
“That’s right,” said Doctor Hetner, who had been watching him closely.
“It will do no good, this straining after what your mind refuses to
recall. When it comes, if it does, it will come easily and suddenly,
when you’re not trying to break down the wall that shuts you off from
the past. Some day you’ll shake the identity and the name of the dead
man, and become yourself again; and it’s both dangerous and useless to
make further efforts until your mind is in condition to grasp the truth
and revive the past.”