Bartol raised his hand to his head with a gesture of surprise. "I
thought I felt a touch on my hair."
"The lady touched you as she passed away," Mrs. Ollnee explained. "She
has gone. They are all gone now."
"I am sorry," he said, in polite disappointment. "I wanted to pursue the
interrogation. Is this the usual method of your communications?"
"This is one way. They write sometimes, and sometimes they speak through
a megaphone; sometimes they materialize a face or a hand."
He remained in profound thought for a few moments, then starting up,
spoke with decision: "You are tired. Go to bed. We'll have plenty of
time to take up these matters to-morrow. Please feel at home here and
stay as long as you wish."
A little later he took Victor to his room, and as they stood there he
remarked, "Of course, all this may be and probably is mind-reading and
ventriloquism--subconscious, of course."
"But the writing," said Victor. "You must see that. That is the weirdest
thing she does. It is baffling."
"My boy, the whole universe is baffling to me," his host replied, and
into his voice came that tone of tragic weariness which affected the
youth like a strain of solemn music. "The older I grow the more
senseless, hopelessly senseless, human life appears; but I must not say
such things to you. Good-night."
"Good-night," responded Victor, with swelling throat. "We owe you a
great deal."
"Don't speak of it!" the lawyer commanded, and closed the door behind
him.
Victor dropped into a chair. What a day this had been! Within
twenty-four hours he had seen and loved the dream-face of Altair and had
been blown upon by the winds from the vast chill and empty regions of
space. He had resented Leo's voice in the night, but had returned to her
in the light of the morning. On the dreamy lagoon he had been her lover
again, pulling at the oar with savage joy, and on the grass in the
sunlight he had been the man unafraid and victorious. Then came the
hurried return, the visit to the court, the rescue of his mother--and
here now he lay in the charity bed of his mother's lawyer! "Truly I am
being hurried," he said; and recalling Miss Aiken's final menacing
remark, he added: "And if that girl and her brother can do it mother
will be sent to prison." Much as he feared these accusing witnesses, he
acknowledged a kind of fierce beauty in Florence Aiken's face.
As he lay thus, thinking deeply yet drowsily upon his problems, he heard
a faint ticking sound beneath his head. It was too regular and
persistent to be a chance creaking of the cloth, and he rose and shook
the pillow to dislodge the insect which he imagined might have flown in
at the window.