“I wonder if my mind is weakening? I seem to do Lessman’s bidding too
easily. I fall in with his every suggestion. I know that he is using me
in his crimes—that he is getting rich as a result of my efforts—and I do
not seem to recollect what transpires, as I used to. Everything is hazy,
with here and there some specially vivid remembrance standing out amidst
the chaos.
“Occasionally he reads me the papers, or hands them to me after calling
my attention to some mysterious crime of which there is an account. Often
he tells me, with a sneer, that he is the author and I the perpetrator of
these horrible affairs. Innocent men are being made to suffer for things
that I have done.
“The police are on the lookout for a mysterious woman who has been
seen often where strange crimes have been committed. Can it be that
they—Lessman and Meta—are using Avis as they are using me? They both deny
it. And Avis tells me that she has no recollection of such things.... I
wonder....”
_CHAPTER XII._