I
Grey’s awakening was as gradual as a clouded dawn. For a time dreams
and realities intermingled. Then slowly a partial consciousness of his
physical being obtruded: his fingers were clutching a silken coverlet;
he turned on his side and the linen pillow-case was cool to his cheek;
through half-open eyelids a sweep of pale blue became visible. Later
he realised that he was in a curtained bed and that the blue was
the colour of the draperies. He lay still for a long while--drowsy,
inert, his sensibilities numb. Presently the ticking of a clock became
audible, and then a rumble of street sounds. At the same moment a
throbbing pain in his head asserted itself. With an effort he sat up,
his hands pressed against his temples, his mind groping. Then in a
flash the unfamiliarity of his surroundings aroused him suddenly,
sharply, like a cold plunge, and his brain cleared a trifle. His memory
went staggering back after the night before; but the mists descended
again and the way grew dark, and he could remember no night without its
morning.
He put his feet to the floor and stood up, but a dizziness overcame
him, and he sank back upon the bed, weak and limp. His heart was
beating tumultuously and his breath came in short, quick gasps. After a
little these abnormalities passed and he raised himself on one elbow,
resting his cheek on his hand. At the contact he started, amazed,
bewildered. In some unaccountable manner he had grown a beard. His
hand ran from his cheek to his chin. Close-cropped at the sides it was
here an inch long and trimmed to a point, and his moustache was one of
several months’ culture and training. He fancied he was dreaming and
would awaken presently to find himself clean-shaven, as he had been for
years.
And now, he remembered; after all, it was quite clear. He had been to
the opera last night, had gone from there to the club, had returned
home late, and, having a pressing business appointment at ten this
morning, had dragged himself out of bed at eight, still fagged and
aggravatingly sleepy. Now he had just had his coffee, and while Lutz
was shaving him he was dozing and dreaming.
But how wonderfully real the transformation all seemed! He grew curious
as to how he looked with beard and moustache, and, crawling out between
the pale-blue velvet curtains, he sought a mirror. The revelation was
dumfounding. He, Carey Grey, who from infancy had been as dark as a
Spaniard, was as blond as a Norseman. He ran his fingers through his
hair, tousled it, going closer to the glass to make sure that there
was not some optical illusion. He puffed out his lip and pulled at his
moustache until his lowered eyes could see it, and he thrust his chin
forward and turned up the point of his beard with the back of his hand
until it, too, came within the range of his vision. If this were a
dream, he told himself, never before had dream been so real. If it were
a reality, never before had reality been so mystifying.
His puzzled survey of himself was followed by a minute inspection
of the room into which he had been so mysteriously transported. Its
general aspect was foreign; its detail distinctly French. The walls
were panelled and medallioned. The bed from which he had risen was
one of a pair, each with its gilded _papier mâché_ frieze and its
looped-back blue velvet curtains. At the head of each bed were six
pillows and another of down at the foot. The full-length mirror into
which he had gazed was duplicated between two windows. Upon the mantel
was a bronze and gilt clock, flanked by partially burned candles in
brass sticks. Two tables, a couch, a washstand, a cheffonier, three
chairs and a wardrobe completed the furnishing. A couple of companion
pictures, unmistakably French both in conception and execution,
decorated two of the wall panels. The hands of the clock stood at
twenty minutes of four. He crossed to a window with three sets of
curtains and three sets of cord loops all of a tangle, and looked out.
For the spectacle that confronted him he was not prepared. The change
in his appearance had indeed been incomprehensible; the strangeness
of the room in which he awakened was inexplicable; but to discover at
a glance that he was no longer on his native soil, that without his
knowledge he had been carried across sea and land and dropped into a
Paris hotel on the Boulevard des Italiens, was not only inconceivable
but terrifying. He was very pale, and his brain was reeling. Twice
he drew trembling fingers across his eyes, as if to wipe out the
kaleidoscope of the street below; but when he looked again the view was
even more convincing. It was a bit of the French Capital with which he
was almost as familiar as with that part of Fifth avenue lying within
range of his club windows or with that portion of Broad street near
Wall into which he had been wont to glance from his office in the Mills
Building.
He turned away from it as from a nightmare, and, sitting down, tried
to think. The idea that he was dreaming was not tenable. He knew that
he was very wide awake and thoroughly possessed of his faculties.
His head still ached with a dull, swollen, congested sensation such
as follows a too riotous night, but he could recall nothing of the
cause. It occurred to him now that he had read in the newspapers of
cases where men had lost their memory for months and had wandered
into remote states or countries. This must be the explanation. And
in his aberration he had given way to some freak of fancy, had grown
a beard and then had had it and his hair bleached corn colour. Men
under similar mental derangement, he recollected, forgot their names
and homes. Perhaps he had been in the same plight. Now, however, his
mind was clear on those points, at least, and he thanked God for his
restoration.
Then he wondered how long he had been away. That night at the opera and
the club; that morning he had risen early to keep an engagement, and
had dozed off while his valet was shaving him--why, that was midwinter;
and now, if he could judge by the trees on the boulevard, and the
tables in front of the Café Riche across the road, and the straw hats,
it must be early summer--late May or June; possibly, indeed, July.
And all this time his friends at home--his mother, his fiancée, his
partner--were probably thinking him dead. What a relief it would be to
them to get the cablegrams he would send, telling that he was alive and
well and was returning by the first steamer!
He smiled as he got up and went to the cheffonier and the wardrobe in
search of clothes. He was thinking of the sensation the papers in New
York must have made over his disappearance; the theories they must have
advanced and the pictures they must have published. And then the tragic
side of the affair took hold of him, and he put himself in his mother’s
place, in Hope’s place, and fancied he could appreciate, in a way at
least, their anxiety as the days passed without tidings, and their
grief and despair as weeks quadrupled into months.
Having discovered an assortment of garments, including a bathrobe of
pongee silk, he looked about for a tub. Across the passage he found a
bathroom, and a dip into cold water relieved his headache and balanced
his nerves. When at length he was in attire which, while quite as
unfamiliar as his yellow hair and beard, was nevertheless tasteful and
well fitting, he emerged from his room, locked the door and started
forth on a tour of investigation. His curiosity had grown with his
dressing, enhanced, perhaps, by his failure to find in any drawer,
closet, or pocket a scrap of writing or printing from which he could
gain a clue concerning his recent past. His sole discovery indeed had
been a wallet containing two fifty-franc notes and a trunk key.
A tall, round-faced _portier_ in green livery smiled and bowed, rather
obsequiously he thought, as he passed out through the wide portal into
the boulevard. Then the commingled scent of asphalt and macadam and
burning charcoal--that characteristically Parisian odour--smote his
olfactories, and before his eyes was the afternoon panorama of the
gayest of Paris thoroughfares. It was the newspaper hour, and a kiosk
in front of the hotel was being besieged by a horde, each hungry for
his favourite journal. Every man that passed had a paper in his hand
or in his pocket. Some were reading as they walked. On the roadway
carriages, _fiacres_, omnibuses were crowding, and Grey noted, with a
sense of old friends returned, the varnished hats of the _cochers_.
The chairs under the awnings of the cafés were filling, and the
white-aproned waiters were coming and going with their inevitable
bustle of trays and glasses.
At the corner of the rue St. Anne he crossed to the north side
of the boulevard and turned into the rue Taitbout, in which, he
remembered, there was a telegraph office, for he meant to lose no time
in despatching his cables. As he picked his way through the narrow
street the messages took form, and on reaching the office it was but
the labour of a moment to put them on paper, poke them in through the
little window and pay the stipulated toll. To his mother he wired:
Safe and well. Sailing first steamer. Hôtel Grammont.
And the others--one addressed to Hope Van Tuyl, East Sixty-fourth
street, New York, and one to “Malgrey,” the code name of the stock
brokerage firm in which he was a junior partner--were similar.
Rejoining the throng of pedestrians on the boulevard, he sauntered
leisurely towards the Avenue de l’Opéra, his mind still busy with
conjectures.
The billboards in front of the Théâtre du Vaudeville caught his eye,
but the attractions they announced made no impression. At the groups
of idlers seated at little round tables before the Café Américain he
scarcely glanced and his own unfamiliar reflection in the plate glass
of the shop windows he failed utterly to recognise. He crossed the
Place de l’Opéra without so much as turning his head, and halting at
the far corner stepped in under the ample awning of the Café de la
Paix and found a seat. Of the waiter who approached him he ordered a
_mazagran_ and some Egyptian cigarettes, and when they were brought he
sat for some time, heedless of his surroundings, his brain racked with
futile speculations.
“_Pardon, monsieur!_”
Someone in passing had inadvertently touched his foot and was
apologising. Startled out of his reverie he looked up, and his face
lighted. Instantly he was on his feet.
“Frothingham, by all that’s good!” he exclaimed.
The other, tall, straight and swarthy, turned upon him a look in which
mystification and suspicion fought for supremacy.
“Really,” he said, coldly, “I--I don’t remember ever having----”
“Of course, of course,” Grey interrupted, not without some
embarrassment, “I can quite understand that you shouldn’t recognise me.
You see, I--well, I’m Carey Grey.”
Mr. Frothingham’s demeanour showed no change.
“Carey Grey,” he repeated, icily; “I used to know a Carey Grey in New
York, a member of the Knickerbocker and the Union; but he was nearly as
dark as I am, and besides--why, he’s dead.”
“If you don’t mind sitting down a bit,” Grey went on, as he staggered
under the news of his own demise, “I’ll try to explain. I’m Carey Grey,
just the same--_the_ Carey Grey, of the Knickerbocker and the Union,
and I’m not dead.”
Frothingham recognised his voice now, and mystification routed
suspicion from the field. He took a chair and Grey sat down, too, with
the marble-topped table between them.
“First and foremost,” Grey began, “tell me what day of the month it
is.”
“The fourteenth.”
“Of what?”
“Of June, of course.”
“And of the week?”
“Thursday.”
“Thanks. I hadn’t the slightest idea.”
Frothingham fancied the man had gone mad.
“The whole thing is most extraordinary,” Grey went on, and then he
proceeded to relate his afternoon’s experience, while his listener
preserved an interested but incredulous silence.
“Can’t remember a blessed thing,” the narrator concluded, “since that
morning last winter--I suppose it was last winter. What year is this?”
He was told.
“Yes, it was last winter, then--January, if I’m not mistaken.”
Frothingham looked thoughtful and counted back. He wondered whether it
was insanity or drugs, or--cunning.
“You must have heard something of it,” Grey went on, eagerly. “Did the
newspapers say I was dead?”
“I think that was the ultimate conclusion.”
“I suppose they searched for me?”
“Oh, yes, they searched. They followed up every clue. There were
columns in the papers for days--yes, for weeks.”
Grey sighed audibly.
“I can’t understand it,” he said, with something of distress in his
voice; “I never thought my head was weak. To be sure, I’d been under
rather a strain, with the market in the unsettled condition it was, but
my memory was always clear enough. Why, I could give you the closing
price and highest and lowest of about every active stock on the list,
day after day, without an error of an eighth. By the way, do you know
how things have been going in the Street? What’s New York Central
now--and St. Paul?”
“Really, I have lost track, Grey,” replied Frothingham indifferently.
“I must get a Paris _Herald_,” the man who had been out of the world
for five months continued; “I’m the modern Rip Van Winkle. Thousands of
things have happened--must have happened, and I’m in blank ignorance. I
just cabled to New York--to Mallory, my partner, and----”
“You what!” exclaimed Frothingham, in amazement.
“Cabled to Mallory. You know him--Dick Mallory, my partner. He’ll be
surprised to hear I’m alive, I suppose.”
“Good God, man!”
“What’s the matter?”
The two sat staring at each other across the table, each a picture of
sudden startled bewilderment.
“Then you really don’t know?” Frothingham asked. “Oh, that’s
impossible! You can’t make me believe--see here, Carey, you’re very
clever and all that, but you don’t think for one minute, do you, that
you are taking me in? I did fancy for a little while that you’d gone
off your head; but I was wrong. You’re sharp and shrewd, and you feared
I had recognised you and that that was why I stumbled over your foot;
so you made up your mind that you’d block my game by recognising me and
telling me this pipe dream. Oh, come, come, be fair! You know; and you
know that I know.”
Grey caught his breath sharply as this torrent of insult surged upon
him. The blood rushed to his face only to desert it. His fists doubled
instinctively, and he rose to his feet, white with indignant anger.
“Take that back!” he commanded, in a hoarse whisper. “Take it back, I
say, or I’ll----”
There was no mistaking his earnestness, his determination; no, nor at
this juncture, his honesty. Frothingham was convinced even against his
judgment.
“Oh, I say,” he retorted, mildly, “don’t make a scene, old chap. If I
said anything, I--I--well, of course you don’t understand. I see it
now. I’m sure I was wrong, and I ask your pardon. There now, sit down.”
“I don’t know that I care to,” Grey replied, the words of the other
still rankling. “I’m not used to being called a blackguard. I’ve never
in my life done anything to be seriously ashamed of, and nobody has
ever dared, until this day, to utter such an insinuation.”
Frothingham was silent for a moment, the mere suggestion of a smile on
his lips. He calmly unbuttoned one of his gloves and then buttoned it
again.
“God forbid,” he said, without looking up, “that I should be the first
to imply anything; but--I wish you would sit down, Grey!--you say
you’ve lost count for five months, and--well, there are some things
that you ought to know.”
Grey resumed his seat. Now the man was talking reasonably. Of course
there were things that he ought to know--hundreds of things probably
in which he was personally interested. The thought instantly became
appalling. What, indeed, might not have happened in five months? Where
had he been during that time? And what had he been doing?
“Yes,” he admitted, “you are quite right, I suppose. One of the things,
for instance, is----”
“One of the things, for instance, is,” repeated the other, interrupting
him, “that you left New York suddenly--disappeared totally and--you
ought to know this for your own salvation--under a cloud.”
Grey started, and the colour that had returned to his face fled again.
He leaned across the table, resting his arms on its marble top.
“Under a cloud!” he exclaimed, breathlessly. “My God, Frothingham!
What do you mean?”
“I’d rather not go into details,” was the answer, given very quietly.
“It’s not a pleasant position that I have chosen for myself, and I
prefer that you don’t question me. What you have told me--and I’m
satisfied now it is the truth--has put another light on the whole
business. And you really cabled to New York?”
“Not half an hour ago. I sent three.”
“It’s too late, I suppose, to stop them.”
“I fancy so.”
“I’d see, if I were you. It is important.”
“But why? For God’s sake, man, tell me why.”
“No,” said Frothingham, rising; “you’d better read about it for
yourself. It will be more satisfactory. You can find a file of the New
York _Herald_ at the office of the Paris paper. It’s only a block or so
away, you know. Look up last January. But I’d try to stop those cables
first. I must be off now; I’ve got an appointment.” And he joined the
now much augmented throng on the promenade.
Grey dropped a five-franc piece on the table, and hurried into a
_fiacre_ that stood in waiting.
“Rue Taitbout, 46,” he directed.
But when he reached there it was to learn that his messages had been
dispatched and that no power on earth could recall them.