"Why couldn't he?"

"Because," said Amidon, with the air of a man uttering something of the deepest significance, "it involves matters happening before June, 1896, and Bra.s.sfield was not in existence until the twenty-seventh of June!

I've promised Edgington that you will get him the evidence he wants."

"What's the nub of the case?" asked the judge.

"A man claims I gave him some rights--or that Bra.s.sfield did--you understand?--"

"I see."

"--in March, 1896."

"H'm!" exclaimed the judge contemptuously. "March, eh? Why, we can subpoena the whole town of Hazelhurst, and show that you were at that time acting as a pillar of society there, every day in that year, up to June twenty-seventh!"

"But don't you see," said Amidon, "that proving this makes my whole story public?"

Judge Blodgett thoughtfully gazed into s.p.a.ce.

"Yes, it would appear that way," said he, at last; "but is it necessarily so? You can testify that you were in Hazelhurst at that time, and legally, that's the same thing as saying that Bra.s.sfield was--I guess; and I'll swear to it, too; and if they aren't too searching on cross-examination, we may slide through--but there'll be some ticklish spots. I'll see Mr. Edgington, and find out just how strong a fabric of perjury we've got to go against. We may have to get more witnesses--and that'll be thin ice, too. I'll look in again this afternoon."

"Please do so," replied Mr. Amidon. "Look at these letters! Do you suppose your _Notes_ would shed any light on what they're driving at?"

The judge looked them over.

"I don't remember anything in the _Notes_," said he, "regarding these matters. But you could take 'em up to the hotel, and Madame le Claire could put you to sleep and talk it out of you in five minutes."

"I'll do it!" said Amidon. "I'll get Bra.s.sfield's views on them, confound him. I'll do this while you're with Edgington. Good-by until after luncheon."

Madame le Claire was examining Mr. Bra.s.sfield with reference to the unanswered letters. Professor Blatherwick was engaged in taking down his answers. In a disastrous moment, Mr. Alderson knocked at the door, and, following his knocking, delivered a breathless message to Bra.s.sfield that an important telegram demanded instant attention.

"All right," replied Mr. Bra.s.sfield cheerily, "I'll toddle right down to the office with you, my boy. Excuse me, Madame; you may rely on my seeking a resumption of this pleasant interview at the earliest possible moment. _Au revoir_!"

Madame le Claire was perplexed. Should she allow him to go out in this hypnotic state? Could she exercise her art in Alderson's presence?

While she debated, Mr. Bra.s.sfield airily bowed himself out, and was gone!

Bra.s.sfield was gone, that was clear: but no system of Subliminal Engineering had any rule for calculating the results of his escape back into the world from which he had for a fortnight or so been absent.

What would he be, and what would he do? Would he return the same hard-headed man of business who had won riches in five short years? Or would he be changed by the return to the normal--his equilibrium made unstable by the tendency to revert to his older self? How would he adjust himself to the things done by Amidon? How would the change affect his relations with Miss Waldron and this bright-haired inamorata so balefully nearing the foreground, like an approaching comet? How would the professor and Judge Blodgett stand with this new factor in the problem? Would he continue to care for her, his rescuer? Owing to some things which had taken place in the Bra.s.sfield intervals, her heart fluttered at the thought of a possibly permanent Eugene.

For be it remembered, that many things had taken place in these days of Bellevale life. The situation had, of course, been changing daily by subsurface mutations which the intelligent student of this history will not need to have explained to him. For instance (and herein the explanation of that fluttering of Madame le Claire's heart) such things as these:

Bellevale is not so large a place that neighbors' affairs are not observed of neighbor. Prior to the elaboration of the law of thought-transference, there was no way of accounting for the universality of knowledge of other people's affairs which certain Bellevale circles enjoyed. The good gossiping housewives along the highways leading into the town are often able to tell the exact contents of the packages brought home by their neighbors, under the seats of their buggies and farm-wagons and late at night; but this is a phenomenon not at all unusual. Neither is it in the least strange that, in town or country, John and Sarah could not sit out an evening together in the parlor or settin'-room without all that occurred being talked over, with perfect certainty as to facts, in the next day's meeting of the Missionary Society or the Monday Club. But what Phyllis thought, what were the plans of Thestylis, and how Jane felt when William jilted her, and why William did it--all of which difficult circ.u.mstances were canva.s.sed with equal cert.i.tude--are things, the knowledge of which, as I said above, was not to be accounted for on any theory at all consistent with respect for the people possessing it, until thought-transference came into fashion. Now all is clear, and our debt to science is increased by another large item.

Mr. Bra.s.sfield and his affairs were as a city set upon a hill, and could not be hid. There was a maid in Elizabeth's home, and a maiden aunt who had confidential friends. A stenographer and bookkeepers were employed in the counting-room of the Bra.s.sfield Oil Company, and the stenographer had a friend in the milliner's shop, and an admirer who was a clerk in one of the banks. There were clubs and other organizations, social, religious and literary; and the people in all of them had tongues wherewith to talk, and ears for hearing.

Hence:

At the meeting of the Society for Ethical Research, Mrs. Meyer read an essay on "What _Parsifal_ Has Taught Me," during the reading of which Mrs. Alvord described Miss Waldron's trousseau to Miss Finch and Doctor Julia Brown. Because of the conversation among these three, the president asked Doctor Brown, first of all, to discuss the paper. And Doctor Julia, who talked ba.s.s and had coquettish fluffy blond bangs and a greatly overtaxed corsage, said that she fully agreed with the many and deeply beautiful thoughts expressed in the paper.

"I'm sincerely glad _Parsifal_ taught her something!" said the fair M.D. to her companions, as she resumed her seat. Mrs. Meyer was the only woman in the town who had ever been to Bayreuth, she added short-windedly in explanation of her remarks, and had lobbied herself into a place on the program on the strength of that fact.

"Does Bess know," asked Miss Finch, "about this mesmerist person?"

"Oh, there isn't anything there," said Doctor Brown, "I feel sure.

Though his inti--ah, friendship with this Le Claire woman is, just at this time, in bad taste. But all men are natural polygamists, you know."

"They say," said the voice of a member from across the room, "that it will be quite a palace--throw everything else in Bellevale in the shade--entirely so."

"They are all talking of it," said Mrs. Alvord. "Jim says it seems odd to have this Mr. Blodgett looking into the Bra.s.sfield business. But everything is odd, now--the hypnotist and Mr. Blodgett, and Daisy Scarlett; she's still here."

"O----o!" said Doctor Brown, in a sinuous barytone circ.u.mflex.

"Really," said Miss Finch, who wore her dress high about the neck, and whose form was a symphony in angles, "such promiscuous a.s.sociations may be shocking, but as to surprise--who knows anything of his life before he came here?"

"Judge Blodgett," said Doctor Brown, "told a friend of mine that he had known Bra.s.sfield from infancy."

"The first light Bellevale has ever received on a dark past," said Miss Finch, "if it is light. And how strangely he acts! Everybody notices it. Always so chatty and almost voluble before, and now--why, he's dreadfully boorish. You know how he treated you, Miss Brown!"

"Yes, and he knows how I treated him for it!" said Doctor Brown. "I propose to call people down when they act so with me!"

"Quite right," said Mrs. Alvord, "quite correct, Doctor. Oh, what a change! And who has changed for the worse lately more than Bessie Waldron? Pale, silent and clearly unhappy. I can't attach any importance to that affair of the strange woman with the striped hair; but that Miss Scarlett matter--that's quite different. Jim and I saw the beginning of that up in the mountains last summer. Daisy Scarlett is a queer girl, so wild and hoidenish--but the people who know her in Allentown just think the world of her, the same as do the people in Bellevale--and her appearance here right after the announcement of the engagement means something. Poor Bess! Hush! There she comes. Oh, Bessie, it's so sweet of you to come, even if you are late! Everybody has been saying such sweet things of you!"

"How kind of them!" said Elizabeth. "Has _Parsifal_ received any attention?"

At the club, of course, no such gossip as that uttered at the meeting of the Society for Ethical Research was heard. Men are above such things. To be sure Alvord and Slater and Edgington and the rest of the "the gang" did exchange views on some matters involving the welfare of the club--and in the course of duty.

"I tell you," said Slater, "Bra.s.s has been practising that French doctrine about hunting for the woman--a little too industriously.

They're getting to be something--something----"

"Fierce," suggested Alvord.

"Well, that isn't quite what I meant to say," said Slater, "but pretty near. 'Terrible as an army with banners,' you know, and condemned near as numerous."

"It's changed Bra.s.sfield like a coat of paint, this engagement," said Edgington. "I saw something last week that showed me more than you could print in a book as big as the Annual Digest. You see, he went sort of gravitating down by where the sewer gang was at work, like a man in a strange country full of hostiles, and although he must have been conscious of the fact that he's slated for mayor in the spring, he never showed that he knew of the presence of a human being, to say nothing of a voter, in the whole gang, and Barney Conlon's gang, too.

Why, he'd better have done anything than ignore 'em! He'd better a darn sight have stood and sung _Drill, Ye Tarriers, Drill!_ as a political move. Now that shows a revolution in his nature. It's uncanny, and it'll play the very deuce with the slate if it goes on."

"Well, you all know what took place at his counting-room," asked Slater, "the day after he got back from New York? Old Stevens resigned, on the street the night before, and Bra.s.s didn't seem to know any more than to accept his resignation. Hired him back since, I've heard, but he ought not to have noticed it. He certainly has gone off badly."

"I knew a fellow once," said Edgington, "who went sort of crazy on the girl question--batty. D'ye s'pose this engagement----"

"They change to their lady friends," said Slater, "sometimes. But he--why, he pa.s.sed me a dozen times with a cold stare!"

"Me, too," said Edgington, "and he didn't seem to know Flossie Smith when he met her, and Doctor Julia Brown gave him a calling-down on the street--a public lecture on etiquette. Colonel McCorkle claims to have been insulted by him, and won't serve any longer on the same committees with him in the Commercial a.s.sociation. And he stays at the hotel all the time, and seems afraid to leave this old judge, and collogues with the German professor and the occultist--and, let me say, I've seen cripples in the hospital that were worse-looking than she is!--and what in thunder it means beats me."

"He wants the judge and the professor at our supper next week," added Slater.