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Title: The man who was two men
Author: Ray Cummings
Illustrator: Paul Stahr
Release date: October 19, 2026 [eBook #79828]
Language: English
Original publication: New York, NY: The Frank A. Munsey Company, 1930
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/79828
Credits: Greg Weeks and Mary Meehan
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MAN WHO WAS TWO MEN ***
The Man Who Was Two Men
By RAY CUMMINGS
Author of "The Snow Girl," "Princess of the Atom," etc.
_Alone in a strange city, a young man "awoke"--not
knowing his name or his past! What could he do?
How could he start life again--and where?_
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced
from Argosy, February 8 and 15, 1930.]
CHAPTER I.
WHO WAS HE?
He felt himself more frightened than he had ever been before--more
frightened than he had ever imagined any one could be. He stood on a
street corner watching the line of passing vehicles. It seemed to be
night, or at least early evening. It was a wide street, with low houses
and stores. A trolley went by, pushing its way through the turmoil of
automobiles. It was an overhead trolley.
He stood at the curb, gripping an iron post which held a street light.
The sidewalk was crowded; people jostled him. He turned and gripped a
man.
"Listen--where am I?"
The man evidently thought him drunk. The man said:
"You're at Main Street and Devoir. What's the matter? You sick? Been
hitting it up, buddy?"
He realized that he was visibly trembling. "No!" he stammered. "No. I'm
all right. Much obliged."
The man looked him over and turned away. He decided that he had better
move along. A crowd might collect. He didn't want that--more than
anything, he didn't want to attract attention. A crowd collecting
around him, looking at him, asking questions. That would be horrible.
No one must ask him any questions!
He started off briskly along what the man indicated was Main Street. He
thought he had never seen this place before. It was an American city.
He was sure of that. A small city. And the time was early evening.
He passed a jeweler's window. At the curb was an iron pole with a huge
clock face at the top. The clock indicated eight twenty.
"Eight twenty in the evening," he thought. But was the clock going? He
looked in the jeweler's window. A chronometer was there--it said eight
twenty-two.
He wandered on with fear striking at him; but he told himself that he
was thinking perfectly coherently. He wondered if this were summer or
winter. Why, it must be summer, of course. It was a warm evening. He
saw that he was dressed in a light gray suit. He murmured vaguely to
himself, "Why, this is a tweed mixture." He put his hand to his head.
He had on a straw hat. He saw that most of the other men passing were
wearing straw hats.
* * * * *
A newsboy came past. "Paper! Paper, sir?"
He felt in his pocket and found coins. He drew them out, looked at
them. And muttered, "Why, of course! They're American coins."
"How much?" he asked.
"Two cents," said the boy.
He handed over the coins and took the paper. His fingers were shaking.
The boy dashed away.
He told himself again, "I mustn't stand here like this." He glanced at
the paper. The date line read Tarlington, Connecticut, June 2nd, 1930.
He tried to puzzle out whether that frightened him or not. June 2nd,
1930? It meant nothing. Tarlington? It meant nothing. Or did it? He
couldn't decide.
He thought, "What's the matter with me?"
What frightened him was that at the moment he could not think of his
name or anything else that any one not insane should know about himself!
He was wandering on again. He came to a department store which was
closed, with unlighted show windows. He walked over and stood in the
entryway just off the sidewalk. He would be a trifle more secluded
here. He stood looking vacantly into the window.
He thought, "I mustn't get frightened. I'll be all right in a minute."
His hands were gripped tightly in his pockets. It gave him an idea. He
began searching his clothes. He found himself going into a panic, but
he struggled to control it.
He thought, "I mustn't let people see me doing this."
He found a few small bills, a pen-knife, some coins. He searched his
other pockets. There seemed to be nothing that would give him any clew.
He stood thinking.
"What'll I do? What'll I do?" His impulse was to dash out in the
street, shouting, "I don't know what to do!" But he thought, "That's
the worst thing. I've got to control it. I'll be all right in a minute."
He took stock of himself. He felt strong and well. He wasn't hungry;
he had evidently eaten recently. He was dripping wet all over
with a cold sweat, but he thought, "That's only nervousness. I'm
frightened--frightened as hell."
He wasn't crazy. He was sure of that. His head was absolutely clear. He
remembered every detail of everything that had happened to him in the
past few minutes. He remembered standing on the corner asking the man
where he was. But before that it was a blank. As though standing there
in that instant he had awakened from a dreamless sleep. A sleep that
had lasted all his previous life. As though now--just now--his life
were beginning.
And then he thought, "Why, I know. This is amnesia."
It seemed to steady him. Amnesia! He knew the word. He knew exactly
what it meant. He had often read of people with amnesia--their memory
of past events taken from them so that all in an instant everything
that had gone before was blank. But that wasn't insanity. There was
nothing dangerous in a condition like that. People often went on for
years, perfectly normal.
It steadied him. He managed a sickly laugh. He murmured aloud, "This is
an awful fix. What will I do?"
There was a policeman standing in the middle of the street at the next
crossing. Had he better go to that policeman and have himself taken to
a hospital? The idea somehow was revolting.
He thought again, "I won't do that. I'll try to get over this."
As he stood there facing the unlighted plate glass window, a dim
reflection of himself was visible. He studied it. What he saw was a
tall, slender young man of perhaps twenty-two, dressed in a light gray
tweed suit and a straw hat; a thin, smooth-shaven face, white, with
staring eyes. A sensitive, boyish-looking face; it would have been
handsome, perhaps, without the fear on it.
He thought, vaguely, "Is that me? It must be!"
* * * * *
It was frightening to stare at the unfamiliar face that was his; but
it fascinated him. He stared. He smiled. The reflection in the window
smiled back at him. The face of a stranger! Yet there was about it
something familiar--the vaguest hint of memory telling him it was his
face.
With the paper folded under his arm he turned from the window. A good
brisk walk might help him. He walked a block. He passed the corner
where the policeman stood. The policeman's side glance made him shiver.
A new thought struck him. The officer seemed to be regarding him
suspiciously, as though he were a criminal. Was he a criminal? What was
he? Whatever idea he had had of giving himself up to the authorities to
be questioned was gone with this last and terrible thought. What was he?
Then it seemed that another vague hint of memory was coming. He groped
for it. Something menacing; sinister. A feeling swept him, something so
elusive he could not define it. A menace, threatening him, indefinable
as the terror of a nightmare. A menace hanging over him, somehow
diabolical. He stood bathed in cold sweat, fighting it, as though this
were a nightmare, and he was struggling to awaken. The feeling passed
presently, leaving him weak and shaken.
The lights of a theater showed at the end of the block ahead of him. He
read the large electric sign:
ZANETTI'S REVUE
He stood again by the curb with clenched fists, staring. Zanetti's
Revue! It seemed as though somewhere in his memory the words stirred
something. Familiar words. But were they? He moved on as though
fascinated. The terror was gone. He felt now a surge of something
pleasant.
He thought again, "Something will strike me as familiar--something that
will bring everything back." He came to the front of the theater. The
lobby was crowded with the arriving audience. At the curb automobiles
were stopping, discharging their passengers. It seemed a fashionable
audience. A line of ticket buyers wound from the box office in a queue
across the lobby.
He stood gazing at the large photographs, depicting scenes from the
show. His heart was pounding. The fear for a moment seemed to have left
him. Curiosity had taken its place, a vague but eager curiosity. He
seemed to be searching for something.
And then he saw what perhaps unconsciously he had been seeking. He
gulped and stood gaping. For an instant all his thoughts failed him. He
was conscious only of his hands clenched into tight fists in the side
pockets of his jacket.
What he saw was a line of short-skirted girls, with two principals in
front of them. It was evidently a dance scene, or perhaps a song. The
girls in the chorus were on tiptoe, with bare arms upraised, and a
leg in the air. In front of them were a young woman and a young man.
A small girl with very thick, short black hair; a very low-necked
bodice, tight at the waist, with very short flaring skirt. A black ruff
was around her neck, wide black ribbons at her wrists. A little black
and white Columbine. Petite, beautiful, alluring. Lips painted into
a Cupid's bow, mockingly smiling. A vivacious little Columbine with
upflung arms, poised on tiptoe.
Beside her was her young man dancing partner. A tall, slender fellow
with wide, baggy trousers; on his face a make-up which widened his
mouth and gave him a foolish grin. He stood with ankles bent--stood
on the sides of his wide flat shoes, with dangling arms and drooping
shoulders. He was grinning fatuously. A very comical sort of fellow,
this partner of the fairy-like black and white Columbine.
He thought vacantly, as he stood there staring at the photograph. "Why,
why, that's--"
It was the face that had stared back at him from the plate glass window
a few moments before. It was his own face!
* * * * *
Again his memory vaguely stirred. That was his picture! Whatever his
name, whatever all the circumstances of his past, he knew at least that
he belonged here in the back of this theater. And the audience was
already assembling!
He turned away from the photograph. He thought, "I must get around to
the back, to the stage door. I wonder where it is? I'll try to find
some one who knows me. Why, that's foolish! Of course they'll know me!
There'll be a friend there. I'll tell him--tell him how frightened I
am."
He became suddenly aware of a girl pushing her way toward him across
the lobby. A small girl in a trim blue serge suit, with a little black
and white toque on her black hair.
He stared. He had never seen her before. Or had he? Then he realized,
"Why, that's the girl of the photograph, the Columbine."
She came running up to him. She gripped him by the arm. She said
softly, "Why, Chuck! Chuck, dear!"
Chuck! Was it familiar? Yes, it seemed to be. What he might have
answered he never knew. A girl had come into the lobby from one of the
arriving automobiles. A tall, slender blonde in a long satin evening
wrap. A girl of extreme beauty, with the aura of wealth upon her. She
saw him. Her eyes widened and she cried impulsively:
"Leslie! Leslie!"
He felt the little dark-haired girl pulling at him. "Chuck! Chuck,
darlin'! Come!"
The other girl called once more:
"Leslie!"
They were attracting attention in the lobby. People were staring. The
girl holding him repeated appealingly, "Chuck, darlin'! Come!" She
pushed him. He was confused. It seemed suddenly that every eye in the
lobby was upon him.
He thought, "Why, yes, that's who I am." He murmured, "For God's sake,
let's get out of here."
"Yes, yes, Chuck."
Over by the box office two men had joined the blond girl. They started
hastily forward.
He felt again that wave of terror. Something diabolical was coming to
him from the blond girl--or from one of the men with her--a sense of
something fiendish.
He gasped, "Get me away!"
The little dark-haired girl plucked at him, pulling him forcibly away.
They escaped to the crowded sidewalk. The terror seemed receding. They
darted around to the side of the theater, down the cross street, and
into a dimly lighted alley. Fire escapes were here, with dressing rooms
opening onto them. In the heat of the summer evening, girls in their
gaudy costumes were sitting on the fire escapes.
The man at the stage door passed them into the theater.
CHAPTER II.
BACK STAGE.
A man said, "Good evening, Mr. Daniels."
"Evening," he responded.
Mr. Daniels! Chuck Daniels! Was that his name? Why, of course! He kept
repeating it as though again it might slip away.
Chuck Daniels! Chuck Daniels!
The back of the theater was a bustle of activity. Girls were crowding
down an interior iron staircase. It was all a confusion of unreality.
He kept telling himself, "I mustn't forget; I'm Chuck Daniels."
There seemed a hundred or more of the girls, in tights and with
spangles with long shimmering capes hanging down the back, and huge
feathered headdresses. A few principals in costumes stood about.
There was scenery piled against the high blank brick wall which was
the back of the theater; a discarded piano with its case opened to
expose the hammers; a hundred odds and ends of props; coils of rope and
electric cables. There were ropes hanging vertically down from the dim
recesses overhead. Near by was the back of the set occupying the stage.
Electricians were wheeling flood-lights that way huge mechanisms with
cables dragging after them like slithering snakes.
The girls were crowding toward the back of the painted wings. From out
front the strains of an orchestra sounded. A man in shirt sleeves, his
hair matted on his forehead with sweat, was rushing about, issuing
low-voiced commands.
A bustle of muffled but orderly activity. Dim and confusing in the
sheen of the many colored lights.
He thought, "Am I part of this? What will I do?"
[Illustration: _"Do I belong in this stage world?" he puzzled._]
The girl was leading him through the crowd. As they mounted an iron
staircase to an upper level of dressing room doors, he turned on her.
He said suddenly, "I'm frightened. I want to talk to you."
Her hand held his arm. "Chuck, dear, you--you're sick again."
"No," he said.
The fear on her face struck at him. A wave of compassion and
tenderness, some sort of emotion for her, swept over him.
"No," he said. "Don't look like that. I'm all right, but--but--I got to
talk to you."
They stood at a dressing room door. A small paper tag was tacked to it.
On the tag was written, "Chuck Daniels of Chuck and Elsie."
The girl whispered, "Oh, Chuck, don't you remember?"
"No, I don't! That's just it, I don't!"
"But you must, Chuck, you must! The show's startin'. Think--think hard!
You're Chuck Daniels. I'm Elsie Kane. We're 'Chuck and Elsie.' We go on
in a few minutes. You got to remember, Chuck, darlin'." She shook him,
pleading, "Think hard, honey. You been all right for so long."
He stood dazed. "Yes, I know I have.... Have I?"
"Yes, of course, darlin'."
She was tense, hurried, and there was stark fear on her face. For a
moment he almost forgot his own fear. This girl--she seemed to love
him. Did she love him? Did he love her? He almost thought so. He clung
to her.
She was whispering, "Chuck, if I only had a few minutes to talk to you,
I could straighten it out. But we can't talk now, we haven't time. We
go on at nine ten. You got to be ready. It's our big chance, Chuck.
This is only a dog town, but you know they'll all be watching us. It's
our big chance. Don't fail me now, darlin'! Don't!"
She shoved him into the little room. It was unoccupied. Was she going
to follow him in? Was this their room? Or was she going to leave him
alone--alone, with vacant confusion?
She said: "I'm right next door. If you call I can hear you, but you got
to hurry."
She looked at her wrist-watch. It was five minutes to nine.
"You'll have time, Chuck. Hurry!"
But he still clung to her. "I don't know what to do," he pleaded.
* * * * *
She stood watching him, white-faced and helpless, as he sank down into
a chair before the dressing table. The little overhead lights shone
brightly on its triple mirrors. He saw his face there, full-faced and
side-faced--rumpled, curly brown hair, staring blue eyes; frightened
eyes. He fought with it; and then as he sat there with elbows on the
table and hands ruffling his hair, a memory came. Two words; he seized
upon them, gripped them.
He turned to the girl: "Elsie, I remember! Elsie, listen; you know what
we are? We're Adagio Hoofers, that's what we are! Adagio Hoofers!"
"Oh, Chuck!" She flung herself on the floor beside his chair, with her
arms sprawled across his lap. "Chuck, you do remember!" She gazed up,
and he saw that her eyes were filled with tears.
His hands went down to caress her dark, bobbed curls. "Sure, I
remember. We're Adagio Hoofers. I'm the one who doped that phrase. I
remember it!"
His mind flung back into that frightening emptiness of the past. But it
wasn't quite empty now.
"You remember Ed Williams, Elsie? He liked that catch line when I told
him."
Little light spots of memory in the dark void. Ed Williams, the press
agent, with his black cigar. Williams had said, somewhere back there in
the void: "Sure, that sounds fine. I'll feature it, Chuck. Listen, kid,
you'll hoof your way onto the front page of every daily in the city."
That was Ed Williams. Chuck remembered him now clearly. And then there
was a piano. A piano in a bedroom somewhere. He tried to grip the
thought of the piano. He remembered being seated at it, playing. Yes,
now he had it! A bedroom in New York. In his boarding house. He was
writing a song, and now the name of the song came to him. No, not one
song--two songs.
He fondled the girl's dark curls. He had frightened her. He mustn't do
that. Her eyes were overflowing with tears. She dashed them away with
the back of her hand.
"Oh, Chuck--"
He said awkwardly: "Quit it, Elsie, I'm all right."
She reached up and gripped his arm. "You're sure?"
"Sure I am."
"Then what comes first? Think--think hard."
He thought: "The Hosiery Number." He said aloud: "Why, we're goin' out
to dance to the Hosiery Number."
"Oh," she said. An infinite relief was in her tone and on her face.
"Yes. An' then what?"
He thought intensely: "And then what?"
It came to him--they would change the scene for the Egyptian set, but
he would still be wearing those incongruous, asinine trousers. And then
he remembered his sweetheart song in the tenement scene.
"I'm all right, Elsie. Listen." He burst into the song, humming it at
first, then singing it while she stared at him, and encouraged: "That's
it, honey! Go on! You got it!"
"Why a girl like you should love a man like me is something I can't
understand."
He went through the verse; he swung into the chorus:
"Just you, wonderful you."
"That's it, honey! Go on! You got it!"
He ended the chorus tenderly, dreamily:
"And so you are in love with just me."
She flung off his caressing hand and leaped to her feet.
"Honey, that's fine. Oh, Chuck, you're all right now! You can remember
everything, can't you?"
"Yes," he said, "all about the show." He added, haltingly: "But this
afternoon--what did I do--I mean, where was I?"
She said swiftly: "We mustn't talk about that now--we haven't time.
You ran away from me, Chuck. You were supposed to meet me at the
restaurant."
He said: "Did I? I mean, did I run away from you?" He added: "I know
where we are. This is Tarlington, Connecticut."
* * * * *
Other memories struck him. This little city some forty or fifty miles
from New York. The show was opening here to-night. This was the first
performance. Zanetti's Revue, trying itself up here on the dog, and
then it would head back for Broadway.
He realized that he was thinking aloud. She interrupted him. "That's
it, Chuck! You got it all now. We'll talk about it later."
As he stood up she clung to him again. She was so small beside him; her
head barely came to his shoulder. He put an arm around her.
She said strangely: "Chuck, can you remember everything?"
It seemed as though something horribly important to her were hanging
upon his answer.
He said: "I don't know what you mean, everything."
"I mean, think back, Chuck. A few months ago."
A few months? Years? His past? It was all a wilderness of confusion.
She said, even more strangely: "This is summer. Can you remember last
winter? I mean, what you did before last winter?"
Winter. He tried to remember what winter would be like. Why, that would
mean snow, wouldn't it? He remembered vaguely that he had seen snow
somewhere, some time.
He groped at her last words. "What you mean? What I did?"
She said: "This is Tarlington, Connecticut. We've never been here
before, have we, Chuck?" She was smiling. A strange smile; she seemed
to be pleading with him.
He said vaguely: "No."
There was a rap on the door. A boy's voice called: "Ten minutes! Ten
minutes!"
"Right!" shouted Chuck.
Elsie dropped him. "My word, we're up against it. Hurry it, Chuck!"
"Sure I will."
It seemed as though his words, his speech, even his mode of thought
were changing. A normality coming to him. He recalled that wild surge
of terror he had felt on the street. And felt again in the theater
lobby. Those people calling him "Leslie." He was not afraid of that
terror now.
He said with a grin: "Listen, kid, you make it snappy. If I can find
those damned pants, I'll be ready in three minutes."
"They're hangin' over there, Chuck. There they are. We got your stuff
out this afternoon, don't you remember?"
He saw his costumes hanging in the wardrobe. On the dressing table his
make-up box was ready.
"Sure I do. Beat it, kid."
She dashed out and slammed the door. He heard her voice come back:
"Fast as you can! Ye gods! If we hold up the show--"
"Don't worry," he called, and flung himself before the dressing table
again. He put on his make-up with a swift, sure touch. This was more
than memory; it was instinct. He told himself that he wasn't frightened
now. He was thinking only one thing: "Ye gods! If we hold up the show--"
He was ready in a few minutes. He stood in the center of the floor.
Adagio Hoofer. The young man of the photograph outside in the lobby.
He stood balancing himself on the sides of his wide, flat shoes. His
sailor pants flopped about his ankles. He hitched his belt up over his
chest. He buttoned his shirt and pulled his necktie awry. He stood
grinning with the foolish grin. He was ready.
He heard Elsie's voice: "Right, Chuck?" And the call-boy's voice:
"Chuck and Elsie! Stage!"
He hurried out onto the iron balcony. The little black and white
Columbine stood there.
"Gee, Chuck, you look great."
"So do you."
He put his arm around the dainty, fairy-like figure. The white powder,
thick on her neck and arms, came off on his hand. He stooped suddenly
and kissed her.
For an instant she clung to him. "Oh, Chuck, darlin'." Then she said:
"Come on, come on, kid."
They hurried down the iron staircase to the back of the stage. A man
shoved them toward the wings. He growled: "Say, you two, you had me
scared!"
"Rats," said Elsie. "Listen, big boy, when Chuck and Elsie hold up a
show, you'll have somethin' to write home about."
They stood in the wings. The line of hosiery and garter girls were
out front. The house was packed. From where they stood they could see
the nearer boxes on the opposite side. Elsie whispered: "You nervous,
honey?"
"No," he said. "We're goin' to knock 'em dead, Elsie."
The orchestra ended the chorus and swung into the eccentric dance.
Chuck's mind was clear. Knock 'em dead, that's all he had to do. It
would be easy.
She twitched him: "That's us. Here we go!" On tiptoe she floated away
from him, out into the floodlight.
He stood the proper interval. He bent his ankles and got up on the
sides of his shoes. He murmured: "Strut your stuff, Chuck." He adjusted
his foolish grin. He waddled out onto the stage to join Elsie, with
the hosiery girls behind them and the sea of upturned faces across the
footlights in front.
CHAPTER III.
THE GIRL IN THE BOX.
Chuck swung into his loose-jointed dance. He caught his inspiration
from the laugh that went up from the audience at his appearance. Why,
this was a cinch! They'd put it over big. The orchestra leader smiled
at him as he went past. Elsie flitted like a little black and white
bird around him. His own grotesqueness was a contrast to her fairy-like
grace. He remembered how the dance director drummed that into him.
Memories were coming back to him fast. The dim auditorium, with its
thousands of eyes upon him, was a blur, an unreality. The only things
real were on the lighted stage. The hosiery girls had now vanished into
the wings. He and Elsie were alone in the spotlight. Memories coming
fast. He remembered the scores of rehearsals. The patient drumming
of all this into him and Elsie, so that now all their movements were
instinctive. He seized her. He whirled her over his head. He heard her
murmur: "Great stuff, Chuck." He dropped her upon one tiptoe, and stood
grinning as she flitted away from him.
The dance came to an end. He stood with Elsie, hidden in the wings,
listening to the applause. The orchestra leader held his baton poised,
ready for the encore. The applause was moderately hearty. He heard the
claque of ushers at the back of the auditorium keeping it going.
"Let's go, Elsie," he whispered.
The orchestra started the encore. He and Elsie went through it. They
took their bows, running out, in again, then out again, while the
claque sustained the applause. Four bows. The applause was thinning
down. He came running to the wings with Elsie's slight figure poised on
his shoulder.
She murmured: "Plenty, honey. Plenty. Let 'em alone. We knocked 'em
dead."
They stood in the wings while the show went on. A man in shirt sleeves
came up to them. He was vaguely familiar, but Chuck couldn't think of
his name.
"Well," said Chuck, "we knocked 'em over, didn't we?"
"You'll get by," said the man, and wandered away.
As they stood there in the wings, diagonally across the theater, one
of the stage boxes was visible. Chuck suddenly noticed that in it were
the three people who had made the scene in the lobby outside. The tall
blond girl and her two men companions.
And as he saw them, the terror swept Chuck again; but this time he
fought rationally to control it. He stood tense, with clenched fists
fighting it, trying to analyze it. An instinct of terror. A feeling
that here was something diabolical. Gruesome. Something concerning him
and the three people in the stage box.
He searched them with his gaze. The terror came like an aura from them.
From all three of them? He could not at first determine. The blond girl
sat there now, gracefully resplendent in her low-cut evening gown. A
girl a few years older than himself, perhaps; beautiful.
Surely there was nothing malignant about her!
The two men sat behind her. In the shadows of the draped loge Chuck
could only make them out as dim, black-suited figures with white
shirt fronts. One seemed a young fellow. The other was a man much
older, a heavy-set figure. Momentarily, as he moved in his chair, the
reflected glow of light from the stage caught his face: a heavy-jowled,
smooth-shaved face, with a square, thick jaw; massive eyebrows; a
shaggy mane of gray-black hair. An evil face. Diabolical.
The word stabbed at Chuck. _Diabolical._ And then another word.
_Gruesome._ Words like stabs of light coming from the darkness of his
past. Here was the terror. He knew it now. This man--
Yet it was so incongruous. Chuck gripped his cold, moist fists and
tried to smile. The show went on. There seemed no place for terror
here. This was comedy, gayety, laughter. Chuck fought the specter of
terror back, and tried to keep his mind on the stage.
* * * * *
The stage was a scene in a department store. The comedian--Chuck
suddenly remembered his name, Sax Hotchkiss--was buying hosiery from
the models who paraded before him and his fat wife. The wife was torn
between desire to have the hosiery and to keep the models from her
husband's eager, admiring gaze. The audience was roaring with laughter
at his antics. It was a risqué scene, but funny, and here in the sticks
it was going over big, no doubt of that.
"Great stuff," Elsie whispered, "they're eatin' it up."
Chuck murmured suddenly: "That girl who called me 'Leslie' is out
front. See her there in the stage box?"
"Yes, I see her." The frightened look came to Elsie again. "Yes, I see
her."
He said: "Who do you suppose she is? Why should--"
A roar of laughter from the audience drowned him. A thousand questions
were flooding into his mind, but suddenly he felt a reticence. This
girl, Elsie, for all their apparent intimacy, still seemed a stranger.
His memory gave him now vague scenes of the past in which she figured,
but it was all confused.
The audience was laughing again. The comedian on the stage was saying:
"But listen, mamma, how can we buy what we don't see?"
Chuck drifted into his vague conflicting thoughts. This girl, Elsie--He
seemed to feel that she knew more than she had told him. Hiding
something? He suddenly recalled her words: "Do you remember what you
did before last winter?"
The question seized on him now like something ominous. What had he
done before last winter? His thoughts whirled away, groping. What was
in his hidden past? Something criminal, perhaps. Was that it? Was that
the terror? Then as though it might be an illuminating thought, he
suddenly recalled his involuntary shudder when the policeman had looked
his way back there in the street when he was groping with complete
blankness. That policeman's look had frightened him. Why? Why should
he be subconsciously afraid of a policeman? Was this girl Elsie trying
to shield him? Had he done something criminal? He tried to laugh. What
nonsense! But was that why she was frightened?
Elsie was whispering now: "I'm goin' to try an' find out who they are.
You go back to your dressing room."
She was leading him from the wings. He thought suddenly: "She's always
leading me. She leads me around as if I was a child. What's the matter
with me anyway?"
His memory was coming back now so that he felt almost normal; but there
were so many holes in it--so many things he knew he ought to know but
did not!
"We've got half an hour, Chuck. The Nile scene is next. Better go to
your room, Chuck. You got half an hour."
They were at the back of the theater. He said suddenly: "Elsie--I've
got to have a decent, quiet talk with you. I'm--you're playin' me for
something! You're not on the level with me--or are you?"
The fear and the hurt in her dark eyes shot compassion through him.
He was confused with his mixed emotions. He flung his arm around this
little black and white Columbine and held her. "Listen, baby--I didn't
mean that. Only, I'm off my balance. Something's happened to me. Can't
you help me?"
She pleaded: "Honey, give me time. These people. I don't know who they
are. Honest, I don't. Or what they're after. But I'm sure goin' to find
out. You wait, Chuck; keep your mind on your songs. We got to put this
show over, honey boy. Will you go up if I leave you now?"
"Yes," he said. "What are you--"
"I want to find out who the dame is in the stage box," she interrupted.
* * * * *
He recalled all the rehearsals for the show. He recalled writing his
songs, trying them out for Zanetti. He recalled a hundred vague scenes
with Elsie. He was not married to her, he knew that now; he was her
business partner only.
All this had happened in New York City. Yes, he remembered that
clearly. He remembered now the theatrical boarding house on West
Sixty-Fourth Street where they roomed. He tried to think back to when
he had met Elsie. It was gone. Lost behind a blank wall. He sat with
clenched fist, thinking, as though with his battering thoughts he could
pound down that wall, but he could not. It was there, and the terror
lurked behind it. He thought: "People certainly can remember things
further back than a few months ago." But he could not. A blank wall.
Suddenly he felt very much alone among all these people, all these
things, strange to him. Chuck Daniels alone in the midst of it.
He muttered: "I guess I'm sick. If I had any sense I'd go to a
hospital." But that frightened him; and it seemed absurd also. He
was perfectly well and strong. Why should he appeal to doctors to
straighten out his life for him? And then he thought of the policeman.
For half an hour he sat there puzzling. There was a rap on the door.
Elsie came hurriedly in. She was dressed for the Egyptian scene. Her
ankle's clanked as she crossed the wooden floor. Her anxious eyes
searched him.
"Ready, Chuck? Come on."
He followed her. On the way downstairs she handed him a note. A slip of
paper with pencilled writing. In the confusion of dim lights he could
not read it.
They headed for the wings. "It came for you from out front," she
whispered.
They stood in the wings. The orchestra was playing the shimmering Nile
music. The girls off stage were singing the temple song. The set was
flooded with dim moonlight. The back drop was shining with its painted
replica of the Nile.
"We got a minute or two, honey," she whispered. "Listen: that man in
the box is Dr. A. P. West." He could feel her eyes upon his face; she
seemed hanging breathless on what he might say. But he said nothing.
"Dr. Arthur P. West. Ever heard of him, Chuck? He's an--an alienist. A
brain specialist or somethin'. Ever heard of him?"
"No," he answered. The name seemed to mean nothing. Then suddenly he
thought he remembered it. His heart was pounding. That specter of
something hideous, indefinably horrible, was lurking in the shadows of
his mind; lurking, crouching, ready to spring.
There was a queer hush to Elsie's murmured voice. Did she, too, feel
this lurking terror?
* * * * *
Chuck whispered abruptly: "What are you afraid of, Elsie?"
It surprised her. "Me? Why--" She hesitated. Then, with sudden decision
and a swift rush of words, she added:
"This is no time to talk. But, darlin', I'm afraid, for you.
There--there's some mystery in your past. I don't know what it is; I've
never known. These people--maybe you once knew 'em. That's what I'm
afraid of."
He steadied his voice. "Why?"
"Because--I don't want anybody to claim you! You're mine, Chuck! I--"
Was she going to say: "I love you?" She almost said it. Then she
changed it. "I don't know what these people are to you! That girl;
her name is Gloria Bates. The young fellow is her brother, Leamington
Bates. They're all well known here in Tarlington. That girl--you don't
love her, Chuck?"
"Me? I never saw her before--except out in the lobby a while ago."
But even as he said it, he knew that it wasn't true. Gloria! The name
was familiar! The name Dr. West was familiar. They lay somewhere in the
blankness of his past.
"Oh," said Elsie, "I was afraid you knew her."
He recalled the note in his hand. There was a light back of him. "Read
it," murmured Elsie.
We will be at the stage door after the performance. You will oblige
me very much if you will meet me there.
DR. ARTHUR P. WEST.
Elsie clung to him. "Chuck, we'll pass 'em up. Honey, we'll pass 'em
up, won't we? Listen, we'll slip out."
The temple song was over. They came next. He stood thinking. He said:
"Well, maybe you're right, baby." But to himself he was saying
vehemently: "I'll be damned if I'm going to duck away from them. If
they want to see me they can see me. I'm not afraid."
He wondered why he dared make such a decision. He wanted to run away.
Yet a fascination was on him, a lure, as though his own will to avoid
this Dr. West was powerless.
CHAPTER IV.
AT THE STAGE DOOR.
"But, honey, I've got to see him. I'm not going to run away from this,
I tell you! Listen, you all packed? Let go of me, Elsie! What is there
to be afraid of? Get your suitcases--I'll lug 'em down. The trunks go
with the show, don't they?"
"Chuck, please; you don't have to see 'em."
"Why not?" he demanded. "Why shouldn't I? What are you afraid of?"
"Well," she began, "well--" It silenced her.
She followed him as he carried the two heavy suitcases down to the
stage door. The performance was over, and there was a confusion here.
Scenery was being struck and made ready for departure, the girls of
the chorus were swarming out, principals attending to odds and ends
of duties and then departing. A babble of voices--an enthusiasm--the
show had gone well; and to-morrow was the big night--to-morrow, the
opening on Broadway. An instinctive memory had carried him through the
performance, but now came the let-down. He felt a stranger, like one
moving in a dream.
At the stage door a man came up. "I'll send on your suitcases if you
like, Daniels."
They yielded up their suitcases and passed through the stage door into
the courtyard. It was dim out here. The alley entrance stood near by.
Down its hundred-foot length the outside street showed, with a line of
waiting automobiles.
Elsie made her last play. "They're not here, Chuck. Come on."
But they were there. Across the courtyard under one of the hanging
lights, the tall blond girl stood with her brother. The light gleamed
on her golden hair; it shimmered on her evening cloak and it shone
resplendent on Leamington Bates's top hat. He wore it pushed back on
his head. He stood leaning against the blank brick wall, balancing
himself with his cane. The heavy figure of Dr. West was beside him.
They saw Chuck and Elsie and they came forward.
"Leslie, my dear boy."
Chuck stood trembling. A repulsion was on him. Yet something held him.
He told himself again: "I'm going to get to the bottom of this."
"Leslie, my dear boy--"
He searched his memory. This man was familiar.
He said unsteadily: "You wanted to see me? Well, here I am."
For a moment they stood with crossing glances. This was a man in his
fifties. A massive face framed eyes that bored from under bushy brows.
Chuck's thoughts were whirling, but he tried to hold them on this Dr.
West, a solid, massive fellow who would have stood a full six feet,
had he not been stooped. He had a thick neck, short, between heavy
shoulders slightly hunched. He wore evening clothes. A gentleman,
with an aspect somehow of distinction. He stood toying with a heavy
cane in his hand. He was smiling. His voice was soft; but there was
a rasp under it. A hidden menace; as though its suavity were a thin
veneer--hardly meant to deceive.
He said at last: "Don't you know me, Leslie?"
"No," said Chuck. "I--I'm sorry, but I don't. Should I?"
Elsie was pulling at him. "We got to go, Chuck, or we'll miss the
train."
West turned on her. "Stand aside, young woman. I'm talking to my son."
Son! Chuck started. He thought: "Does he claim to be my father?"
But again his memory stirred.
Elsie moved back under West's stern gaze; but she was still within
hearing.
* * * * *
West said slowly: "I thought you were willfully denying me, Leslie. I
see now it isn't that. You--you don't know me?" He put his hand up to
Chuck's shoulder. That touch made Chuck shiver.
He heard his voice, like the voice of a stranger, saying: "No--no--I
can't say I do. No, sir." He added with a burst: "But perhaps I should.
You see, I--this afternoon something happened to me. I can't remember."
The stammered words seemed intelligible to West. A look crossed his
face. Comprehension? It seemed that. He opened his mouth as though to
speak and thought better of it and turned. "Gloria, come here."
The girl and her brother came slowly forward. West said: "Look at them,
Leslie lad." His heavy voice seemed trying to be gentle. "You know
them, don't you?"
Chuck stood gazing at this girl, Gloria, at her beauty, the aura of
wealth, refinement and culture about her. His memory was groping.
He knew her, or seemed to know her. On her face was an expression of
wonderment and anxiety.
She murmured: "Oh, Leslie."
It brought a cry from Elsie: "Chuck, honey, don't--"
But again West whirled on her. "Be quiet!" He swung on Chuck. "This
adventuress--"
It was all a confusion to Chuck. He heard Elsie say: "Adventuress! What
you mean?"
Chuck tried to summon his wits. He cautioned her: "Wait, Elsie." He
turned to West. "I don't know just what to say, sir. You confuse me.
You say I am your son?"
West gripped him. "Leslie, lad, don't talk like that; you frighten us!"
And then he was pleading: "Come home with me, Leslie. I'll straighten
you out."
Chuck heard Leamington murmur to the girl: "By Jove, this is strange,
Gloria. Fancy! He's not bluffing; he means it."
West was saying: "I'll straighten you out. It's nothing serious, lad. I
understand it, and you must come home with us. We've been worried about
it, don't you see, leaving us the way you did. And your mother--"
His mother! It brought another shock to Chuck. Had he a mother?
"She's ill, Leslie. Ill, worried, frantic with anxiety over you. She
was in bed to-night and not able to come out. For months she's been
horribly worried."
His mother!
"We saw a picture in the paper, Leslie. It seemed to look something
like you, but we couldn't quite believe it. We didn't tell your mother.
We thought there was no use raising her hopes on such a chance. We came
here and then we found that it is you." He turned more forcefully. "I'm
the one to take care of you. And I'll say this, Leslie, I'm sorry for
what happened six months ago. Not but what you were wrong--of course
you were wrong. But I can see now, with this curious, frightening
ailment--you quite evidently had a real attack of it six months ago
when you left us."
Gloria had come forward again and touched him. The perfume from
her enveloped him. She murmured: "My dear boy, throw off this evil
influence. Don't you see we all love you?"
Leamington said: "My dear fellow, you must have had a rotten time. By
Jove, this is terrible."
* * * * *
Chuck was stammering. He heard himself saying: "Why, father, I'm all
right, only I got all confused."
Memories were coming, surging over him now. It seemed blurred and
vague, like a motion picture running out of focus--running backward,
skipping and starting again. Out of focus, but every moment becoming
clearer. What these people were saying was true. He was Leslie West.
This was his father. This was his fiancée. He must love them. He
thought suddenly that perhaps he did. And at home his dear mother was
ill, worried over him. And mingled with these new memories there was
only Elsie Kane; this other life into which he had been flung this
evening. The little black and white Columbine. Elsie Kane. A stage
girl. An adventuress? Was she?
She was standing behind him. He heard her say with a sudden surprising
force: "Chuck, don't go into this any more to-night. To-morrow we'll
dope it all out, see? To-morrow. Listen, we got to catch this train."
He stammered: "Yes, father." He said suddenly: "I'll see you to-morrow,
Elsie. I must go home to-night."
"Chuck!" Her tone was almost terrified; West fronted her off, but she
added: "Chuck, you're not goin' to let me down?"
Leamington was holding Chuck. "By Jove, Leslie, old dear, take it
quietly! You're confused! You'll be straight on all this presently."
Chuck turned: "I won't let you down, Elsie. I'll see you to-morrow
night at the theater. I'll be there early."
He let them lead him through the alley to their waiting limousine which
stood at the curb outside. Its uniformed chauffeur leaped out and
opened the door. He murmured: "Good evening, Mr. Leslie. Glad to see
you back, sir."
They shoved him into the luxurious interior of the car. He heard
Elsie's involuntary cry: "Chuck!"
As the car started and rolled smoothly away he turned to look back.
Elsie's slight, drooping figure was standing at the curb, staring after
them.
CHAPTER V.
WAS HE LESLIE WEST?
"Now, Leslie, lad, tell me."
He sat with his father in the library of the Wests' home. A luxurious
home. They had come through its iron gateway, wound up through the
secluded grounds, to the porte-cochère.
It was a large building, of several wings. Somber trees shrouded it.
A pallid moon hung overhead. Chuck had sat tense in the limousine,
staring. His home! He knew it now. But it seemed now that he was seeing
it with different eyes--seeing it for what it was, a place of shadowed,
nameless terror, lurking within gloomy walls.
Gloria and her brother were waiting in an adjoining room. Chuck sat
facing his father. Chuck or Leslie? He began almost thinking of himself
as Leslie--Leslie West. Of course, that was his name!
His father said gently, "Tell me all about it, Leslie, lad."
More than anything, Chuck wanted to tell the truth. "But there isn't
much I can say," he declared earnestly. He told how he had suddenly
come to himself just this evening with memory wholly gone. How he had
found Elsie. Had found the life of the theater into which, apparently,
he fitted. He ended, "I--I don't know what it all means. There's been
something the matter with me--something the matter with my head."
His father was smiling kindly, "Don't be frightened, lad. I'm a
physician; who should know better than I that it isn't serious?"
"Isn't it?" said Chuck. "Father, you mentioned--"
He called this man "Father" so naturally! And as though there were two
parts of his brain working, he was conscious now that he was talking
differently. He recalled how in the theater he had said, "Listen, baby,
we're goin' to knock 'em dead." But he did not talk like that now. He
said slowly, "Father, you hinted that I had been this way before--lost
my memory, I mean."
"I assume you did, Leslie. Six months ago when you left us so
suddenly--when you disappeared."
"Tell me."
He listened while his father told him what had happened. He had never
been in business. There was no need for him to work. He was engaged to
Gloria Bates; but six months ago he had begun acting strangely. Twice
he had postponed the wedding. He had wanted to go on the stage.
"The stage," Chuck murmured.
"Yes, lad, but we couldn't permit that, of course. Why, it would
kill your mother, the thought of it. You were acting strangely, then
suddenly one day last winter you came to me--Leslie, I'm going to talk
to you plainly. Shall I?"
"Why, yes," Chuck said wonderingly. "Of course."
"I will." His eyes seemed gauging Chuck. "I'm an alienist--a
brain specialist. That my own son should be one of my patients is
unfortunate."
One of his patients! But Chuck's memory now told him it was true. He
had heard this before. His father, treating him for an obscure ailment.
He remembered it dimly.
Dr. West went on: "A curious condition. The memory, as I've often
told you, is built up by impressions engraved, as it were, upon the
subconscious mind. The will then brings these impressions into the
conscious mind--"
He spread his thick hands with a gesture. "No need for me to give you
technicalities, son. Technical details always sound frightening, and
there's nothing to be afraid of. You've always had an abnormality
of the brain: a tendency to lose your memory--a rare variation of
the common amnesia. Your attacks seem to come in waves, at intervals
of about six months. You had one last winter. You lost your memory,
undoubtedly, of your life with us here. For six months, you tell me,
you've been living in New York. I could not find you. I tried very hard
to trace you.
"You were building up new memories, a new life. Thank God I found
you, Leslie! And then to-day--I suppose because you chanced to be in
Tarlington--the familiar sights here caused another disturbance. It was
again six months--and you were susceptible to attack. You went blank;
and now the blended memories are coming back--your New York life, and
your previous life here with me."
* * * * *
His eyes were very keen. Chuck groped with what his father was telling
him. This explanation--was it true? It seemed to be.
But Chuck said suddenly, "Then, who is Chuck Daniels?"
Dr. West seemed to start; but he controlled himself. "Who? Why, I
suppose that's the name you gave yourself."
"You mean, during the last six months in New York?"
"Yes, you went blank. You had started over again; you had to call
yourself something."
Chuck said slowly, "Then I am only Leslie West? There is no such person
as Chuck Daniels?"
"Of course, not, lad! What an idea!"
His father's gaze seemed measuring him, as though trying to pry into
his thoughts. Dr. West was smiling, but it seemed as though back of the
smile he was frowning.
And suddenly Chuck came to the thought, "It's a lie! He's lying to me!
All this, about amnesia. I've been blank--but it isn't amnesia. Liar!"
The thought faded. His father was saying, "Don't you worry about it,
Leslie, boy, and above everything, say nothing to your mother."
"No," he promised, "of course, not."
He had not yet seen his mother. She was upstairs in bed. Gloria would
break the news to her that her son had returned.
West went on, "Last winter one day you came to me acting very
strangely, Leslie. You said you did not want to marry Gloria. That you
did not love her. We quarreled." West leaned forward and put a hand on
his son's knee. "That's all over and done with now. I'm sorry. I know
you were not yourself that day. I'm sorry for my harsh words, but--you
don't realize--you've never realized--your mother's heart is bad. A
shock would kill her. These last few months, wondering where you were,
have almost killed her."
Chuck searched into his own heart. This was his father. Did he love
him? Or did he hate him? Or was it just terror he felt?
There was a brief silence. And within the whirl of Chuck's thoughts he
could remember now his six months with Elsie in New York; but he could
not remember meeting Elsie. And back of that he recalled more vaguely
his life here as Leslie West. He was convinced that this was his
father. He remembered Gloria; a kiss; he remembered proposing to her.
But back of all that was again a blank. Five years ago? Ten years ago?
They were all lost and gone.
His father was quietly discussing amnesia with him now. Amnesia. Yes,
that was it.
There was nothing to be frightened at. He had had a shock, when he
wanted unreasonably to go on the stage, and had a quarrel with his
father; and that shock had caused his periodic attack of this mental
ailment.
Gloria and her brother came to the doorway. His father said, "Have you
told her, Gloria?"
"Yes."
"Did she take it all right?"
"Yes. I think so. You can go up now."
"Gloria, come here."
Gloria came slowly forward. She had discarded her evening cloak. Here
in the quiet, subdued light of this luxurious library she seemed even
more beautiful, with a calm, imperious beauty.
She said gently, "Is he all right now?"
"Yes, Gloria. Nothing at all to worry about. He had a shock, that's
all. We've got him back, Gloria, our same old Leslie."
Chuck rose to face her. He stammered, "Why, I'm straightened out now,
Gloria. I'm sorry if I've worried you."
She smiled. She put her white arms up to his neck. The exotic perfume
of her enveloped him. Suddenly he found himself holding her close,
kissing her.
"Gloria, I'm sorry I've treated you this way."
She was limp in his arms. "That's all right, Leslie. Don't you want to
go up and see your mother?"
He released her. "Why, yes, of course."
* * * * *
Why did all this seem so unreal? As though they were all acting in some
turgid, sinister drama? Chuck followed Gloria. Leamington said, "Fancy
your having such a queer attack, old chap. But I'm glad you're over it."
They ascended a broad mahogany staircase and came to the bedroom.
Chuck entered. His mother lay propped up in bed.
"Leslie, my boy! You've come back to me."
It was a dream to Chuck, but his memory told him it was real. He
remembered his mother. He remembered her, not only as he saw her now
lying in bed with a book beside her, but in other ways. A stout,
healthy-looking woman, for all her weak heart. He recalled the
activities of her social duties. And he recalled how imperiously she
had on occasion gazed at him through her lorgnette when he did anything
to displease her. Mrs. West's weak heart ruled every one. Anything that
displeased her brought on a heart attack.
Yes, he remembered his mother. He told himself that he loved her,
but he thought now that it was a love born of a sense of duty. It
was obvious now why his wanting to go on the stage would shock this
household.
He held his mother in his arms. "I've come back to you, mother. I'm
sorry I ran away. Did I frighten you too much?"
She kissed him, then held him off and regarded him tearfully. "You
almost killed me, Leslie. Gloria, you've got him back, haven't you,
dear? I'm so glad. No, you mustn't tell me about it now, Leslie. I'm
too tired. All this excitement. You can tell me in the morning. But
I'll sleep well now, knowing that you're here."
Again to Chuck came the impression that this was very unreal. He went
back to the library presently. Gloria and Leamington were departing
for their near-by home. He held Gloria again in his arms. "Good night,
Gloria, dear."
"Good night, Leslie."
But it was cold. The vision of a little black and white Columbine
danced before him. The sudden words, "You are Chuck Daniels," rang in
his head. He thought, "Hang it all, am I really two people?"
He felt suddenly that within him were two personalities:
laughter-loving, singing and dancing Chuck Daniels, slangy of speech;
and Leslie West, somber, refined of speech, morbid and frightened.
He sat again alone in the library with his father. The lights were all
out save one that shone from the electrolier on the table beside them.
The big room was dark with shadow. The yellow spot of illumination
threw monstrous shapes of them on the portière of the French windows.
"We'll talk this out in the morning, son."
"Yes, sir."
"You'll have to give up this other life. You can see that. With your
mother's heart, it would kill her, Leslie."
In all the unreality, this at least was real. He felt suddenly that
this was reality for Leslie West--this tyranny of his mother's ill
health, her weak heart.
He said, "Well, I don't know, father. I'm sort of obligated, you know."
* * * * *
His father stared. "Obligated?" Then he added, with a touch of
harshness, "You're not entangled with that woman? You don't mean that?"
"No. No, sir."
"Then what do you mean?"
"I mean I'm engaged to dance in Zanetti's Revue. I've got a contract. I
can't break it, can I?" He did not add, "And let Elsie Kane down, when
it's her big chance!" His father would not understand an emotion like
that.
"Contract? Nonsense, Leslie, you were irresponsible when you made it."
There was a pause. He felt his father's gaze upon him.
"Leslie, shall I give you your treatment now?"
Chuck half leaped from his chair. "Treatment? No! No!"
That brought a flood of memories. He lay back in his chair, bathed in
cold sweat. Treatment? He remembered the hypodermic injections. One
every six months. He recalled the scars of the needle on his upper arm.
He had not noticed them to-night, as Chuck Daniels in the dressing
room. Did Elsie know about them? He could not remember that she had
ever spoken of it. Did she think him a drug addict?
He heard himself protesting, "No! No!"
"Oh, very well, Leslie. Not now, then. But if I give you one now,
you'll be normal for six months--until it wears off, don't you
understand?"
"No! Not now!"
Was this the nameless terror? His fear of this treatment?"
"Oh, very well. To-morrow, then. I can trust you to behave yourself
to-night, Leslie?"
Words, so terrifying!
"Yes, father."
"Very well. You're overwrought. We won't do it to-night, son. You'd
better get to bed, Leslie."
His father followed him up to his bedroom. He remembered this bedroom
clearly.
At the door they stood a moment.
"Good night, son."
"Good night, sir."
He pressed his father's hand. Closing the door, he switched on the
light. Familiar bedroom! His clothes were here. Everything was just as
he had left it six months before. It was on the second floor of the
house facing the side gardens. He stood a moment at the window. The
shadowing trees hung close. It was a calm, warm, starry night, with
moonlight filtering through the tree branches.
He sat in the chair by the bed. His memories every moment were
clearer. He was the old Leslie West now. Docile. Subdued by his
father. Dominated by what he thought was love for his sick mother.
Frightened at the injections which, every six months, his father gave
him--unreasonably frightened, his father had always said. The old
Leslie West? No, not quite. For there were memories of Chuck Daniels in
his confused thoughts.
Chuck sat fighting the terror within him. He was all right. His father,
a skillful physician, assured him there was nothing dangerously wrong.
He thought suddenly, "But I've got to go back into Zanetti's Revue--I
can't let Elsie down!"
The unreality of Elsie Kane became abruptly real again. Two
personalities warring within him. He could feel them.
* * * * *
As he sat lost in his thoughts he seemed to hear a slight noise at the
bedroom door. He looked toward it, decided it was nothing. He wondered
if he really loved Gloria? He was engaged to her; but did he love her?
He realized that he had often pondered such a question in the past?
Why? Why did he distrust her?
Or was it the lure now of Elsie Kane confusing him? Was there such a
person as Chuck Daniels? Or was that only a name which Leslie West had
invented during his six months of blankness in New York?
Elsie's words echoed in his mind. "Chuck, honey, don't let me down."
Did he love Elsie Kane now? Could he--did he dare--escape from the life
of Leslie West?
He found himself standing suddenly at the bedroom door. Without
conscious purpose he turned its knob. It was locked on the outside!
He realized that was the noise he had heard. His father had locked him
in.
A prisoner! A wave of fear swept him. He remembered now, he had often
been locked in rooms. A prisoner--was Leslie West no more than that?
But the window was open. He had never climbed through the window.
Leslie West was abnormally afraid of falling from any height. He
recalled vaguely that his father knew it.
But this was Chuck Daniels! He strove to throw off Leslie West. He
muttered, "By heavens, I'm not afraid of any of 'em. But I got to get
this straight--get the light on it. That man--Dr. West--"
Not his father?
Through the open window came the sound of a low whistle. He turned,
staring, listening. The whistle was repeated. He went to the window and
jerked up a shade. As he stood there, etched by the bedroom light, the
whistle came again. Down in the garden in the shadow of the trees he
saw a small, dark form--a girl! Her arm went up in a gesture. She moved
into a patch of moonlight. It was Elsie! She stood gazing up. Every
line of her figure seemed pleading to him.
He answered her gesture with a wave of his hand. It was as though he
were throwing off some evil spell. He could feel it dropping away from
him. He was Chuck Daniels, fighting--fighting for normality.
The bedroom window was some thirty feet above the ground. To the left,
just beyond the broad outer sill, a stout trellis of a heavy thick
climbing vine was fastened to the side of the building.
He could climb down that way. Leslie West couldn't, but Chuck Daniels
could. He put on his coat, which he had discarded, and turned out the
bedroom light. Back at the window, he saw that Elsie had moved forward,
watching him.
He heard her low voice, "Oh, Chuck!"
He called guardedly, "Quiet, Elsie. Get back out of sight."
Her figure slipped away into the shadow of a tree. He climbed out onto
the broad window sill. He reached for the wooden trellis; tested it
and found that it was firm. He clambered cautiously down. He heard her
anxious warning, "Look out you don't fall, Chuck!"
He leaped the last six feet to the ground.
She was beside him. "Chuck!"
"Hello, baby! They locked me in, but that couldn't hold me."
The spell was broken. He laughed. And within him was the thought, "Why,
this is the real me--I've found myself again."
She whispered hurriedly, "There's a train at one fifty-five, Chuck. We
can just make it."
"Sure! Sure we can." He added with sudden grimness, "Elsie, all the
time I was in that house I was Leslie West. I tell you, it's weird! But
I'm Chuck Daniels now. And I'm going to find out what this means. I'm
going to fight it through!"
They scurried off through the shadows of the tree-shrouded grounds.
CHAPTER VI.
BATTLING THE UNKNOWN.
They sat in the day coach of a midnight way train for New York. Most of
the passengers were asleep, hunched uncomfortably in their seats.
"I'll tell you the truth, Chuck. I never told you before, because I
didn't want to mix you up. I found you on Broadway."
"Last winter?" he interrupted.
"Yes. Last winter. A night last winter. I was feelin' pretty gloomy
that night. You know, sort of down and out like. I was in the 'Pretty
Baby' show, but it flopped." She smiled. "You don't want the whole
history of _my_ life, do you, Chuck?"
"Well," he said.
"Well, not now, anyway," she retorted. "Suffice it to say, honey, me
not bein' any theatrical genius, havin' all my talent in my feet, so
to speak, I found myself sort of up against it here in the big wicked
city." She was smiling, but she turned suddenly serious.
"Anyway, I was out of a job, and lonesome, and the bank roll was
pretty skinny. And then I found you." She said it with an odd hush to
her voice. He felt her hand tighten on his. "You came wanderin' along
kicking the snow. A real handsome sort of lad, if I do say it myself.
Delicate, sensitive--"
He answered her smile. "Am I?"
"Sure are, Chuck. But that wasn't why I stood looking you over, an'
why I followed you down the block. I ain't in the habit of following
handsome young lads, but I did follow you because you passed quite
close to me. You didn't see me, but you was talkin' to yourself and I
heard you say, 'I don't know what to do! I don't know who I am!' Well,
anyway, I went after you!"
Her fingers were cold in his and her voice was trembling a little. She
was telling the absolute truth. He could not doubt it. "I went after
you, honey. I don't know why I did that either, but I did, and in about
half a block I caught up with you. I don't guess I'd have spoken, but
you suddenly turned and hung onto me. You wanted to know who you were
and where you were. Just the way you did yesterday, Chuck."
He listened with his memory striving to pierce this blank hole in his
past. She had talked with him. Had found him frightened and helpless.
"But you wasn't crazy, Chuck, I could see that. Just like a child,
sort of, that had got itself mixed up. Lost. I suggested takin' you to
a hospital. But that scared you, terrible. You begged me not to. You
said, 'No, no, they'd find me!' Well, for me, that was enough."
She turned whimsical. "Beauty in distress. Masculine distress! So I
took you home to my boardin' house, Chuck. Say, listen, don't look at
me like that! I'm a perfect lady, always. I told the boardin' house
keeper this was my brother. A long-lost brother. I got you another
room, an' I took care of you."
Strange, fantastic story; but he knew that it was true, for presently
what she was saying began to meet his own conscious memories. She had
found nothing in his clothes that would identify him; and when she
questioned him, little things that he had said made her realize that he
had emptied his pockets, fearful that some one would find out who he
was. The only thing that he would say was: "I want to go on the stage.
I got a genius for it, I know that."
* * * * *
He said: "But, Elsie, where did you get the name 'Chuck'? Did you name
me?"
"I asked you what your name was. You didn't know the first day. The
second day you told me you thought it was Chuck, so that's what I
called you."
"And how about the 'Daniels' part of it?" he demanded. He was hanging
breathless on her answer. It wasn't just chance, this name Chuck
Daniels. He had been Leslie West, out there in that somber house which
was Leslie West's home. But now he was Chuck Daniels. Not just a name;
he was a real person. He felt, here on the train, that Chuck Daniels
was more real than Leslie West. It was all so gruesome.
She said: "You thought of that about a week later. You came runnin' to
me one day and said, 'I know who I am! I'm Chuck Daniels!'"
All so very strange! "But, Elsie," he said, "I wasn't Chuck Daniels. I
was Leslie West. Did I ever mention Leslie West?"
"No." She added, "But when we got to Tarlington yesterday I saw
you actin' strange; and when that society dame showed up in the
theater--oh, then I knew, Chuck! An' I was afraid--I was afraid."
She suddenly burst into tears.
"Why, baby, don't do that, don't do that!" He caressed her awkwardly as
she sat huddled against him.
"Chuck, I thought I was goin' to lose you yesterday--all those people,
pullin' against me."
He tried to soothe her. "Nonsense, Elsie. Take it easy, baby! We've got
to get it straight. You and I stepped up pretty fast, didn't we? Seems
to me we must have. Me, a boob! An' us now, in six months, in Zanetti's
Revue."
"You did it, Chuck. There was somethin' like genius about you. You
started right in. You demanded a piano. I got you one."
A sudden thought occurred to him. "Did I have any money, Elsie?"
"Money! That was one thing you didn't have nothin' of. But I had money."
"You told me you were lonesome, discouraged and broke," he protested.
"Well, I had a little money. It was sort of tough goin', Chuck, at
first, but we pulled through it."
"Oh," he said.
Tough going! He could imagine it. His imagination pieced it together
where still his memory failed. This girl, sharing her money with him,
getting him a piano. Starting him in this stage life, which, for some
vague, obscure reason he seemed so fitted for.
"Songs," he said. "When did I start writin' songs?"
"Almost at once, Chuck. You acted perfectly reasonable except you
couldn't remember your past. We soon worked a way of hidin' that from
people. We doped out a phony story about you comin' from Australia
or something. Nobody cared much, anyway. I got you the piano an' you
started right in playin' it. Gee, you're great on the piano, Chuck. An'
then you began writin' songs. Three or four of them have been published
already."
"But why?" he demanded. "Why could I do all this? How could Leslie West
ever be a songwriter and a dancer?"
She said solemnly: "I don't know."
* * * * *
He thought about it. "Father said"--he felt her shudder as he said the
words--"father said last night that I had been talking to him about
wanting to go on the stage."
She waved that away. "Well, you're there--we're there. Oh, Chuck, you
won't let me down, will you? You ain't goin' to dash all this to pieces
after we got it built up, are you?"
"No!" He added suddenly: "Elsie, listen; I'm all right now. I'm Chuck
Daniels, as you say. But in that house out there to-night, I was Leslie
West. It's frightening, I tell you! I was a different person. I thought
differently--I didn't talk like Chuck Daniels--I talked like Leslie
West."
Elsie stared, white-faced, as he plunged on: "There's two of me, Elsie.
I'm two people. I don't understand it. You can't just say I lost my
memory. It's more than that."
He clutched at himself. "I can feel Leslie West inside of me now. He's
a coward. He's gloomy, frightened. He loves his mother, as a duty, an
obligation. He's been taught to be afraid she'll die, of heart trouble
or something, unless he does what she wants."
Chuck paused suddenly. Then he added slowly: "Elsie, there's something
those people want Leslie West to do. They're trying to force
him--me--into doing it."
She murmured: "Marry that girl Gloria?"
"Yes, that. And something else. All of 'em--mother, father, Gloria and
her brother--all of 'em trying to get something out of me." He sat
staring, trying with his memories to clutch at something which seemed
to dangle just beyond his reach.
"Chuck--"
He came back to the reality of the train. "I'm Leslie West, Elsie.
Afraid of my father--God, I'm afraid of him--an' he's got me cowed; he
can do what he likes with me."
"Chuck!"
He smiled grimly. "That's Leslie West. But I'm more than that. I'm
Chuck Daniels. He's a real person, not just a name Leslie West called
himself when he had amnesia. That's a lie! Where would Leslie West get
the feelings I got now? I tell you, I'm afraid, all right--anybody'd be
afraid of a weird thing like this. But I'm no coward. I'd crack that
Dr. West over the head if he dared touch me! An' where did I get this
knack for writin' songs? All this stage stuff--I got a talent for it."
He told her all that had transpired in the West home. "What do you make
out of it, Elsie?"
She sat, white and blank, "I don't know. It's--oh, Chuck, you got to be
careful of that man! Tell me you'll be careful of him."
"I'll be careful, don't worry about that. The danger is--" He tried
to laugh. "When I'm with him, I'm too much Leslie West. Chuck Daniels
could handle him."
He added slowly: "I think it's Chuck Daniels he wants to make away
with--murder!"
She gasped: "What do you mean by that?"
"I was thinking, if he could kill the Chuck Daniels in me, then he'd
have the Leslie West all cowed and docile. Maybe that's what he's
after; it seemed so. Because he wants to get something out of Leslie
West. Oh, I don't know what I mean, Elsie, I'm just talkin'."
For a time they sat in silence.
"What are you goin' to do?" she demanded at last.
"I don't know. I got to go through with it, Elsie, because Leslie West
is in here. Oh, I'm not talkin' sense." His words terrified him as they
did the girl. "Not talkin' sense, Elsie. It could get me--drive me
crazy, couldn't it?"
He gripped her, pleading: "You can't be two people an' hold your
balance."
Another silence, out of which he said suddenly: "Elsie, there's a name
in my head; the name of a town." A note of awe was in his voice. "Sea
Cove, Delaware. It belongs to Chuck Daniels: I feel it does. Elsie,
don't think I'm going to fight this alone. There's no sense of that.
I'm going to a doctor, first thing to-morrow morning. A good doctor, in
New York."
"An' a detective," she said.
CHAPTER VII.
WATCHED.
But he did not go to a doctor that next morning. He was exhausted with
the strain of what he had been through. It was nearly dawn when they
reached their rooms in the New York boarding house. Chuck went to bed,
fell into a heavy sleep, and it was mid afternoon before he awakened.
Elsie slept in her room across the hall, dozed with an alarm clock
beside her. At seven that morning, she was up and out.
Chuck awakened to his familiar bedroom in the theatrical boarding
house. He awoke refreshed, clear-headed, and he recalled clearly all
the events of the preceding night. He lay for a moment stretching,
staring at the ceiling. He looked at his clock--quarter of three.
Beyond the chair at the bedside, where his clothes were piled, he saw
his little upright piano; popular music littered it. Beside its stool,
the small table with his manuscript. He lay for a time regarding it. He
realized that to-night was the big New York opening of the show.
This morning he had planned to consult some reputable physician here in
New York, and he had slept the morning away!
He leaped out of bed, put on his dressing gown over his pyjamas, and
slipped into his bedroom slippers.
Elsie was not in her room; he stood in the hall and called her.
The two windows of Chuck's bedroom faced on the street, two flights
up. He went to one of them and glanced out. There were a few taxis and
trucks passing, and normal streams of pedestrians. Chuck's attention
was attracted to a figure standing on the opposite sidewalk, a man with
a cap pulled low on his forehead.
He saw Chuck at the window, and seemed to start; took a step as though
to move away, then thought better of it and stopped: and fumbled in
his pockets, produced a cigarette and lighted it. His back was to the
window now; and in a moment, without glancing up again he moved along
the sidewalk to where a standing truck hid him from Chuck's sight.
But Chuck had recognized him. A burly fellow, dressed in rough clothes.
Chuck had seen him the night before, at the curb by the stage door of
the theater. And, in his memories of Leslie Wrest, he knew this man
well.
He was the Wests' chauffeur. The man's name came to Chuck now. Timmons,
a family retainer, Chuck remembered he had always feared him.
So Dr. West was having the boarding house watched! He had no doubt
telephoned to Zanetti's offices and they had given him Chuck Daniels's
home address.
Chuck drew back from the window, but stood behind the curtains where he
could still see the street. In a moment Timmons came from behind the
truck, and gazed up at the window. He was furtive now. A cigar store
was across the street, and Timmons ducked into it. The interior was
visible from Chuck's window. The chauffeur went into one of the phone
booths. Presently he came out; and took up his watching of the house
again--this time from a point farther away.
Chuck laughed grimly. "Phoned Dr. West, I suppose, to tell him he's
located me. Well, he hasn't got just that weakling Leslie to deal
with--he won't find Chuck Daniels so easy."
* * * * *
He was suddenly worried over Elsie. Then he saw her coming along the
street, a trim little figure, hurrying toward the house. She did
not see the lurking chauffeur. But he saw her, and recognized her
doubtless. He came forward, stood gazing as she mounted the front steps.
Chuck heard her coming. He rushed into the upper hall to greet her. She
took her hat off and flung it on his bed, and came slowly forward.
"How are you feelin'?"
"Fine. Hungry as blazes. Listen, Elsie, they're watchin' the house.
That's the West chauffeur, Timmons, out there--he saw me and phoned to
Dr. West, I suppose."
[Illustration: "_Elsie, they're watching the house!_"]
"Let him," she said. "You stay in here, Chuck. It was my idea to get
help. No use tryin' to fight this alone."
Downstairs they heard the boarding house telephone ringing, and Mrs.
Peters's voice: "Mr. Daniels!"
They stared.
"For you, Chuck--I'll take it. You wait."
There was an extension in the hall up here, just outside Chuck's
bedroom. Elsie ran to it.
"Hello? Yes, sure, this is Elsie Kane talkin' for' him.... My Gawd, we
forgot all about it! The second act called for three o'clock? Sure, we
knew it, Jimmy.... No, we ain't coming. None of your business, that's
why.... We'll be there at eight. Tell Mr. Isaacs we'll be there OK
to-night."
She came back to Chuck. "My Gawd, we forgot the afternoon rehearsal.
Zanetti will be raisin' hell."
"Maybe we better go."
"No, we hadn't. You stay in here, Chuck. That's just the idea--I got us
a detective. I got him at nine this morning. He's had six hours workin'
for us already."
Chuck collapsed on the bed.
Her eyes were gleaming. "I should have done it months ago. His
name's McGuire. He said he'd report here. Oh, he has plenty to
work on, all right, with what I told him. An' I've seen a doctor,
Chuck." Her vehement words were tumbling over each other. "Dr. Frank
Adams; his office is right near here. He's a specialist on nervous
disorders--brain troubles. I told him all I could, an' he wants to
see you. But he said I was right: if they're watchin' you, and I had
a hunch they would be, there's no use puttin' em wise that you're
consultin' a doctor. He's comin' here, Chuck, after awhile."
He sat speechless. Elsie was no dumb Dora.
"You ain't mad, Chuck?"
"Mad?" He stood up. "You're great, kid. What'd they say? What did the
doctor say?"
"Don't you worry--he's comin' here to talk to you."
The phone was ringing again. She said: "Maybe that's for us."
She dashed into the hall. "Hello.... Yes, this is Elsie Kane.... For
me, Mrs. Peters--hang up, please."
Chuck stood listening.
"Oh, hello, Mr. McGuire.... You found her? Say, that's great!... No,
I can't talk plainly. He's listening, an' the doctor said not to tell
him ahead of time.... Sure, we want her.... Well, use the long distance
telephone--that's what you been doin', ain't it?... Absolutely. Get an
airplane, I don't care. To hell with the expense.... Well, then the
train.... About ten o'clock? Well, come to the theater--that's where
we'll be at ten oclock.... Yeh, I'll get you seats; at the box office
in your name.... Listen, I don't need to tell you all this now. We want
to see you. The doctor's comin' here.... Yes, the address I gave you.
Come on up. Yeh, about four o'clock...."
* * * * *
She came back to Chuck. Her face was glowing. "It's all right."
"What's all right?" he demanded. "Was that the detective? I heard you
say I was listening--not to tell me. Elsie, what is it? Why can't you
tell me?"
"Easy, honey! It's all right. But the doctor said not to tell you."
"Why not?" The terror was leaping at him. They wouldn't tell him! They
were afraid to tell him!
She put her arms around him. "Easy, old fellow. It's only because,
if we got any surprise for you, the doctor said a real surprise--a
shock--would help you. He said, 'Restore normality.'"
Chuck tried to smile. "But I'm normal, Elsie."
Normal! He could feel, even now, the craven fear which was Leslie
West in him. Memories of Leslie West. His father, treating him with
hypodermic injections.
"I'm frightened," he said suddenly. "Leslie West is frightened as hell."
She held him off, staring at him. "But you're Chuck Daniels. Fight that
Leslie West! Bang him down, Chuck."
He fought with it. "I will! What the hell--Chuck Daniels never was
afraid of anything!"
They went to the window. Timmons was still loitering on the opposite
side of the street.
His fingers rambled over the piano keys while she moved back and forth
setting the breakfast table.
She came in with the coffee cups. "Not nervous, are you, Chuck?"
He stopped in the midst of an improvised melody.
"Nervous? About what?"
"Oh, not about your own affairs! Forget 'em, Chuck! About to-night.
Opening night."
"No, indeed," he said. "I wouldn't get nervous over a little thing like
that."
They ate the meal, with Chuck sitting on the bed and Elsie in a chair
across the table facing him. There was a queer sense of domesticity
about it. A theatrical bohemianism. Freedom. Jollity. It was as though
this were his little wife, seated here over their mid afternoon
breakfast. And to-night was opening night.
He thought: "This is my real life. It must be. It's what I want. What I
love."
He seized one of her hands across the table.
"Hey, take it easy," she protested, "you're spillin' the coffee."
He laughed. "Elsie, I--" He was going to say, "I love you, Elsie. I
wish we were married and that this was real."
But something stopped him. He thought: "Am I Leslie West? Would my
mother die if I married this girl? Would I be a murderer, killing her?
Have I got any right to be interested in any girl? Leslie West, with
something very queer the matter with him."
"Chuck, honey, don't look like that."
The breakfast was finished. "Play the piano," she urged. "Sing your
sweetheart song, just once, an' then I'll go out an' you can get
dressed before they come. You got time."
He sat at the piano; she threw a pillow on the floor and curled up on
it beside him. "Go ahead, Chuck. Sing it--gee, it's wonderful." He sang
it for her, ending:
"And so you are in love--with just me."
Her eyes were brimming. As the notes of the song died away she murmured:
"You said it, honey. I am in love, with just you. I do love you, Chuck!
An' I'm fightin' for you. We're both fightin', puttin' up the best
fight we can."
CHAPTER VIII.
"SOMETHING NAMELESS."
Chuck replaced his shirt. "Well?" he demanded.
Dr. Adams laid his stethoscope aside. "You're physically sound. Sit
down, Mr. Daniels. If there is anything more you can tell me--"
He was a tall, grave-faced, gray-haired man, this Dr. Adams. The
typical modern physician. Elsie and McGuire stood whispering in the
hall outside. The doctor called: "You may come in."
McGuire was not a typical detective. A small thin individual. He
looked, in repose, like a tired bank clerk. But his manner, when he
spoke, was alert; and his eyes darted ratlike about the room. He and
Elsie came in and sat down silently.
"Well?" demanded Chuck. His heart was pounding.
The doctor said gently: "There isn't much I can say; not now at any
rate. Your case is something wholly strange. You say your father--"
McGuire interrupted: "I got some dope on him. Can I talk about it, doc?"
"Yes, in a moment. Your father, this Dr. West, has been treating you?
Think hard, lad; not what he told you last night, but further back. A
year ago--did he ever give any explanation?"
"I can't remember," Chuck stammered. "But I can remember the
injections."
"Eight of them evidently, by the scars on your arms. You think he gave
you one every six months?"
"Yes, sir. That's what he said last night."
"But six months ago he skipped it?"
"Yes; I ran away."
"Then a year ago was the last one."
"I suppose so." It was still all in the blankness of the past to Chuck.
"That would make the first one four and a half years ago," Dr. Adams
went on.
McGuire put in: "That tallies with--"
"Don't say that!" Elsie interrupted sharply.
"Why not?" Chuck demanded. "Dr. Adams, you're all holdin' out on me. It
frightens me."
"It need not, lad. I'll be frank with you. Whatever is the cause of
your condition, if we could clear up your memory you could probably
tell us enough to explain it. You see? There are quite evidently two
personalities struggling in you. One is real, the other is--" He
checked himself. "That's theory. One thing, as a fact: you've had
amnesia. At least two attacks--one yesterday, one six months ago."
"My father said that's what he was treating me for."
"Quite so," agreed Dr. Adams. His gaze went to McGuire.
"But you don't think so?" Chuck insisted.
"I was thinking," said the physician slowly, "that his treatments might
be the cause of your main trouble--not the cure."
He checked Elsie's exclamation. His gaze clung now to Chuck's staring,
horrified eyes.
"I would have no right to impugn a brother physician. But it so happens
that I've heard of this man West. Beyond what Detective McGuire tells
me, I recall that ten or fifteen years ago there was a Dr. Arthur
P. West, of a small Delaware City, who got himself into rather a
nasty mess for unethical practice. He just escaped a jail sentence.
McGuire has the information now that Dr. West of Tarlington no longer
practices. And he's only been in Tarlington about four and a half
years. He came from Delaware."
* * * * *
Dr. Adams smiled. "You say we are holding out on you. Only on one
thing--a discovery of McGuire's this afternoon. It's because we want it
to come as a surprise."
"Oh, it's pleasant," assured Elsie.
"Yes, it's pleasant," the doctor agreed, "A surprise--a sudden shock,
it may, I believe it will, bring you a sudden flood of additional
memories. You see?"
"An' when we get those," exclaimed McGuire, "we'll know where we stand
with this Dr. West all right. Listen, Mr. Daniels. Out in Tarlington,
that Dr. West hasn't got a very good reputation. But his father was
OK. A rich lumber merchant. He's been dead ten years. Leslie West's
grandfather--"
"Can you remember him?" Dr. Adams demanded. "Think hard--just keep your
mind on my questions."
Chuck pondered it. "No," he declared finally. "But it seems I've heard
my--my father mention him. Or mother."
"McGuire tells me he was a rich man," Dr. Adams added. "And this Dr.
Arthur P. West was his only son. A black sheep--or at least, his father
and he did not get along. This is all rumor, of course. In Tarlington
they say there is insanity in the West family."
A wave of terror swept Chuck. Insanity! Dr. Adams went on:
"Leslie West is Dr. West's only child. He was a favorite with his
grandfather. You don't remember him? Is that too far back--ten years
ago when he died?"
A new memory abruptly came to Chuck's whirling thoughts. "I've got
something I can tell you, Dr. Adams. The safe!"
Chuck was sitting on his bed, his face buried in his hands. A sudden
tenseness came to the room; they all sat Staring at him. The physician
said softly:
"Hang onto it, boy! What is it? Tell us."
"The safe," Chuck repeated. "There's a safe out there in father's
study. I can remember it. He keeps something in it--something
important. I don't--" His voice trailed away.
"Hang onto it, boy!"
"Yes, sir, I'm trying to. I can remember it; a year ago, maybe two
years. He was giving me a hypodermic injection. He said--I was
frightened. I didn't want him to do it to me--an' he said, 'If I don't,
your head will get all confused. You may lose your memory--and then get
false memories.'"
Chuck stopped.
"What is it?' Dr. Adams demanded sharply.
"He said, 'That Chuck Daniels you seem to think you remember, is a
phantom. He never existed, Leslie. It's because in our family, there is
insanity--'"
Dr. Adams murmured: "And then he gave you the injection?"
"Yes, sir."
"And it cured you of the delusion of Chuck Daniels! Left you only
Leslie West--for another six months until his drug wore off."
McGuire demanded; "What about the safe?"
"He keeps something in it.... The drug that he uses on me--that's in
there!"
McGuire leaped to his feet. "In there, now?"
"I don't know! I guess so--"
Chuck sat staring. Then terror swept his face; it surged over him.
The nameless terror. Dimly back in his mind the nameless thing was
crouching again, something alive, gruesome.
* * * * *
But the memory was gone. A glimmer of light in the darkness, showing
the nameless specter vaguely for an instant, then extinguished. Chuck
fought to bring it back, but the blank darkness of his past had closed
around it.
McGuire shook himself. He swung on Dr. Adams. "What I got to do is
to get out there and open up that safe! Listen, here's what I was
thinkin'. If we go out there to-night--Chuck here knows the location of
the safe, the layout of the house, don't you?"
"Yes," said Chuck.
"I ain't above burglary," said McGuire. "Not in a good cause. We
haven't got anything tangible on this Dr. West. This weird stuff
wouldn't get you far in court."
Dr. Adams said slowly: "If you had that drug--you think it's in the
safe?--I could analyze it."
"We'd have proof," McGuire declared excitedly. "Oh, I know you pretty
near got this doped out, doc. You're a high-class physician--you
wouldn't be mixing in this thing unless you was pretty sure this West
was a crook."
The doctor murmured, "But burglary, McGuire."
"Don't worry, I won't get caught. I'd like to take you, though; you can
stay in the car."
McGuire grinned. "Say, if we go after that safe out at West's to-night,
I'm wonderin' if they got a dog. A watchdog can cause you more trouble
than--"
"Dog?" said Chuck vaguely. "It isn't a dog. I don't think it's a dog.
It's something--nameless."
The detective shook him. "Don't talk like that! You give me the creeps!"
CHAPTER IX.
ACROSS THE FOOTLIGHTS.
They stood at the stage door. "We'll leave you here," said McGuire.
Chuck nodded. "The West car followed us all the way."
"Sure. They'll be out front. Maybe they'll want to see you after the
show, or during the show. Don't you see 'em, kid!"
"No, I won't."
"Dr. Adams and I will come up to your dressin' room--"
"At ten thirty," Elsie put in.
"Right. An' don't worry, West ain't goin' to try any strong-arm
stunts. Not around a theater. An' not when he knows now that you got a
bodyguard."
Dr. Adams drew Chuck aside. "Keep your mind off this, lad. For the next
few hours, get into the spirit of your work. Chuck Daniels--opening
night--you've got work to do."
"It would queer him in the show if he didn't keep his mind on it," said
Elsie.
The physician added, "But I mean more than that. Dr. West will be out
front. In a box, probably, where you'll see him. Perhaps he'll have his
family with him--_your family, Leslie_."
Chuck started. Went pale. The physician saw it, and gripped him by the
arm. "That's just what I mean, boy! You're brave enough--my God, I can
appreciate what you're fighting! And West knows it. When you see him
out front you'll feel more like his son than you do now. He's playing
on that. He'll ask you to meet him, and your mother. You won't feel
like refusing! Leslie West, denying his father and his mother, and
his fiancée, that girl Gloria--for what? For me, a stranger? And this
detective?"
Chuck stood shaking. "Don't talk like that!"
Elsie clung to him. "He's only warnin' you, Chuck."
"I know. I'll be careful. You said you had a surprise--"
"Forget it!" Dr. Adams commanded sharply. "Forget everything but Chuck
Daniels--on his job, making good in this performance."
"I will," Chuck promised. "Elsie, from the minute we go inside, I'm
Chuck Daniels, get me? Chuck Daniels, helpin' us put our act over.
We're gonna make a hit, baby. We'll hold Zanetti up for a raise by
to-morrow."
The physician shook his hand. "That's the talk."
"Well, see you later," said McGuire. "We'll be in the orchestra,
wishin' you luck."
They departed. Chuck and Elsie went through the stage door. It was just
eight o'clock. The place was a hustle and bustle of confusion. The
nervousness back stage was at once apparent. It permeated every one,
from the suave, debonair Zanetti with his fiercely upturned mustache
down through the principals and chorus girls to the lowliest call boy.
The stage hands cursed unreasonably when a rope got tangled. To-night,
of all nights, ropes were tangling frequently. The electricians cursed
the lights. Out front the orchestra leader gazed over the musicians and
wondered if they would go dumb and forget how to read music. To-night,
of all nights!
The doorman said, "Good you're on time. Zanetti's raisin' hell. An' you
missin' the rehearsal this afternoon."
"Not raising hell with us," said Elsie. "Man, he wouldn't dare speak to
us. We ain't takin' nothin' from nobody to-night. Come on, Chuck, let's
get upstairs."
They reached Chuck's dressing room.
"I wonder if they're out front, Elsie?"
"They?"
"The Wests."
"Forget 'em." She gazed at him anxiously, then turned and left the
room. He donned his costume and put on his make-up. He grinned at
himself in the mirror, but the grin was wrong. It didn't match his
staring eyes. What was the surprise Dr. Adams had for him? No, he
mustn't think of things like that. He was Chuck Daniels, afraid of
nothing. But his father, maybe his mother also, and Gloria, would be
out front.... No! Those were Leslie West's people!
* * * * *
Alone here in the dressing room, he was conscious of the thoughts and
the fears which were the Leslie West in him. He was Leslie West! He
thought, "God, I'm two people! It's horrible."
"Nervous, Chuck?" It was Elsie's voice from the room next door.
"Don't be nervous, honey--we'll be the hit of the show." He heard her
laugh--but it was a high-pitched, almost hysterical laugh.
At nine o'clock she was ready, and she came in. A little black and
white Columbine. He thought he had never seen her look so alluring.
She eyed him. "You all right, Chuck? I mean, not nervous over the show?"
"No."
"Then come on, let's go."
The hosiery girls were crowding back stage. Zanetti was striding up and
down, furious at something; and then smiling, waving his fat hands.
"It is beautiful. It goes most beautiful. Everybody do their best
to-night, see?" He smiled at the girls. "You are most beautiful, girls.
Never forget that. Out front they love you."
The hosiery girls were herded off to the wings. They stood at the side
where the stage was visible. Beyond it the left-hand box showed. The
Wests were there! Elsie tried to stand in front of Chuck, but he saw
them.
Gloria was resplendent, with calm, haughty dignity in the front of the
box. The reflected light from the footlights gleamed on the satin-white
smoothness of her neck and arms. Behind her, in a position not so
prominent but still perfectly visible, sat Mrs. West. Leslie's mother.
All Chuck's flooding memories told him it was so. Cold and haughty.
Disdainful. Her gray-black hair rose in a wave from her forehead. Her
ample bosom was wide with lace, and jeweled with a brooch and a rope of
pearls.
As Chuck stood watching, she raised her lorgnette and surveyed the
audience with a cold, haughty stare. Behind her and Gloria in the dim
seclusion of the loge showed the white shirt fronts of Dr. West and
Gloria's brother Leamington.
The hosiery girls did their dance.
Elsie whispered, "Almost us, Chuck. Get your nerve."
She had not mentioned the Wests. Chuck said nothing. He was staring at
his mother. And then he was out on the stage, dancing with Elsie. He
tried to forget his mother. He would not look that way. He gloated in
the laughter of the audience; they liked him, anyway!
He was horribly nervous at first. His knees quaked as he danced on the
sides of his shoes; but the nervousness presently passed. It was going
big. Chuck and Elsie! Going big. He carried Elsie off on his shoulder.
They took their bows. There was more applause to-night than last night
in the hick town.
"Great stuff, Chuck. We knocked 'em."
He did not answer. He felt suddenly that Leslie West was surging
uppermost in him. His mother out there. There was a moment when
Chuck was wholly conscious of the fight within him. His mind was a
battleground. And then he no longer thought of it that way. Chuck
Daniels was being submerged; he began thinking, reasoning unconsciously
as Leslie West.
He stood with Elsie, watching the stage. The comedian and his fat wife
were buying hosiery. Chuck could see his mother here from where he
stood in the wings. He could feel her shrinking at the coarse jokes.
"But listen, Momma, how can we buy what we don't see?"
And that other, worse crack, "Momma, listen, I got to measure these
stockings, don't I? You can't go by the marked sizes."
He could feel his mother shrinking at the coarseness of it. Putting
herself through this to appeal to him. And Gloria was appealing,
too. Could a man with any sense of decency and honor break his word
to a girl whom he had promised to marry? She sat there so beautiful,
cultured, refined. That was it: refined. So different from this tawdry
tinsel of the stage. Was this all the decent side of life appealing to
him; trying to win him from the coarseness, vulgarity?
* * * * *
He was very silent as he and Elsie went back upstairs. Elsie noticed
the change. She was white and tense, but she said nothing. She left
him, to change her costume for the Egyptian scene. He sat staring into
his mirror. He was hardly conscious of the time passing. Then Elsie
came back. She swaggered across the room with her anklets clanking. She
stood at his dressing table and powdered the white flesh of her legs,
her arms, her neck. The vivid red of her loin cloth, the red and gold
breast plates, the red of her angular Egyptian headdress all matched
her painted lips. A red and white temptress. Was that what she was?
She dashed the powder over him and laughed. And then something his
father said last night echoed in his mind, "You're a rich man's son,
Leslie. Don't get mixed up with a chorus girl."
"We're knockin 'em dead, honey. Zanetti's tickled."
He said vacantly, "It's going all right, then?"
"Yeh, great."
Presently they were again on the stage. Bathed in the moonlight of the
flood-lights, with the shimmering Nile behind them. Hundreds of admiring
eyes staring from out front. But from the dark void there Chuck could
feel only the stare of his mother. Elsie was dancing around him. Red
and white temptress. Mockingly beautiful, alluring. In the play she was
tempting this country youth from the States who had wandered down here
on the banks of the Nile with his wide pants and his foolish grin. A
pantomime. Neither of them throughout the show had a line to speak.
He danced his loose-jointed, eccentric dance, Elsie writhed in a circle
around him. Her slender white arms were like sinuous snakes. The music
was exotic, sensuous. But cleverly mingled with a jazz rhythm. He
seized her. He whirled her aloft. His hand was gripping her bare leg.
The thought flashed to him, "Gloria is out there." Gloria shrinking.
His hand on Elsie's leg was burning him. Gloria's love for him would be
disillusioned.
He tossed Elsie away. He stood grinning at her. He went through all
the gestures of the pantomime. He held her close with a grotesque
simulation of passion. Held her against him; and she leaned far back,
her face mocking, smiling up at him. Her painted lips whispered, "Great
stuff, Chuck, we're doin' fine."
They took their encore. "Gee, we put it over, Chuck. We sure did."
The performance went on. At nine thirty a note came from Dr. West:
Leslie, I will see you at the stage door after the performance. Do
not deny your mother, son. She is pleading for you.
He and Elsie stared at it.
"They can't see you, Chuck."
"I--"
"Oh, Chuck, darlin'." It terrified her. "Chuck, remember what Dr. Adams
said!"
In Chuck there had always been a strong urge of love for a mother. An
instinct--Elsie had spoken of it. Chuck Daniels had written a "mother
song." Zanetti had accepted it for the show. Chuck had written it with
a flash of genius--an inspiration--an instinct.
He felt now within him a surge of love for his mother. This mother out
there in the box, with her weak heart, was pleading for him. He was
disappointed in this mother, but the instinct to love her was there.
"Chuck!"
"But I must see them, Elsie! My mother--"
She stared. She shook him by the arm. "Chuck! You can't!"
He thought vaguely, "No, I can't! I'm slipping." He said, "Well, you
see--"
"I'll send 'em the answer." She seized a pencil and scribbled on the
note. She showed it to Chuck:
You go to hell!
"That all right, Chuck?"
He was slumped in his dressing room chair. She dashed out and
dispatched the note.
* * * * *
He strove to get hold of himself. At nine fifty he was ready for their
last scene in the show: the Tenement Scene. He was dressed now as a
poor but romantic young man of the tenements. His shirt, smeared with
the dirt of honest toil, was open at the throat, exposing his bronzed
neck. He was made up to look as handsome as he could. Elsie said that
he was handsome.
He stared at himself in his dressing room mirror. He tried to appraise
his face, strongly masculine but sensitive, almost poetical; romantic
blue eyes, curly brown hair, brushed smoothly back. A delicate-looking
fellow, but not sickly. That's the way Elsie had sometimes described
him. He wondered suddenly how Gloria would describe him. In this
tenement scene would Gloria see him as the romantic young toiler,
seated all day in the factory at his soulless machine, but with his
sensitive soul dreaming his dreams, and now come home to his tenement
singing his song of those dreams? Would Gloria see it that way, or
would She think it all very cheap and tawdry?
Elsie came in; she was dressed like a little factory girl.
"Time, Chuck." She put her arms around him as he stood up. "Honey,
dear, you're not yourself. Buck up, kid, put this over. This is the big
scene."
Then once more he was on the stage. Alone on the stage now, holding
this vast audience. The painted walls of the tenement kitchen were
around him. He sat in the broken rocking chair by the stove. The stage
was dim. A single lamp stood on the kitchen table, on top of the red
tablecloth. The lamp shade hung crooked. He hitched his chair so
that the circle of lamplight would strike the side of his face. The
auditorium was dim and hushed. He caught the leader's eye. The baton
went up. The strains of his sweetheart song began.
He sat singing it:
"How a girl like you could love a boy like me,
Is something I can't understand--"
He stared off into vacancy. Behind him lights were lighting back of a
transparent drop. A vision of Elsie, his little factory sweetheart, was
showing.
He sang the song through:
"And so you are in love--with just me."
The vision of Elsie was fading now. He thought suddenly, "I wonder if
Gloria is sneering?"
The applause died away. Zanetti had said, "A novelty, see? One song on
top of the other." From the sweetheart song, before the applause had
ceased, the orchestra modulated into the different key of his mother
song.
He began it. He cleared his throat nervously. He was nervous; nervous
as the devil. He saw the orchestra leader flash him a warning glance;
he began singing, and there was no nervousness in his full, rich
barytone voice. Untrained, but winning for that very quality--its
youth, its strength, its untrained naturalness.
"I've a dear old pal who's waitin'
In a cottage by the sea--"
His song. He had composed it, as Elsie said, inspired by genius. A
flash, like a vision, of himself seated at the piano composing it, came
to him. He rose from the broken chair--the familiar business of the
performance. He wandered to the footlights, still singing.
He threw himself full length on the stage, on his stomach, with his
elbows down, his face raised, his chin cupped in his hands, singing,
staring at the audience over the footlights.
"Mother mine, you built a little nest,
Mother mine, you always did your best--"
But out there in the crowded darkness was the reality of his mother. He
did not see her. He did not want to look at her. But the vision of her
was clear before him. Sitting out there with her upraised lorgnette.
She thought all this was banal, childish, tawdry. It seemed a mockery
to him that this should be his mother. Or was his song a mockery? He
had written it in the fog of blurred memory. Inspired--Elsie had said
that.
* * * * *
He heard the applause ring out. This theater-full of people didn't
think it was banal. It gripped them. They could feel what it meant to
have a mother who was a dear old pal.
He was singing again, the second verse now. He still lay stretched full
length on the stage, peering over the footlights to make the audience
feel that they were his vision of his mother; to make every mother out
there in the audience respond to him. Every mother but his....
"Mother mine, I know you're waitin',
Patient, gentle, kind and true--"
Every mother but his. Then in spite of himself he turned his glance
to the box; and he caught a glimpse of that upraised lorgnette. A
travesty. A mockery of motherhood. He faltered in the song. Almost a
sob was in his voice. It was a cry of protest from his heart.
The orchestra leader's face was near him, just to the right, hardly
fifteen feet away. He caught another warning glance. He steadied his
voice, thinking, "I never had a mother, a real mother."
The audience thought his sob blended with the song. It did. It was very
real.
He ended the second chorus:
"I could never find a better pal, mother mine,
An' so I'm comin' back, I'm comin' back to you."
The strains of the orchestra died away. He stood up to take the
applause. He bowed with a graceful dignity which had been taught him;
then found himself in the wings, listening to the applause.
"Gee, Chuck, that was great."
"Was it?"
"It sure was. Wonderful. The hit of the show, honey."
She pushed him and he went back out, bowing again. His gaze was
attracted to the right-hand stage box. It was directly opposite the one
the Wests were occupying. It had been empty all evening, but there was
a movement there now. People were coming in to take their seats.
Chuck stood stricken: stood staring at a white-haired,
bewildered-looking woman in black; and two men with her--Detective
McGuire and Dr. Adams! They came in and sat down, secluded in the rear
of the box, carefully hidden from the audience by the portières.
Chuck was standing frozen. Elsie reached for his arm, jerked him into
the wings.
"Easy, kid! Take your encore, honey."
He whispered: "But--" And then he knew. It flooded him. "My mother! My
mother!"
"Sure it is, honey!"
"My mother!"
"Yeh, Mrs. Daniels! Widow of Charles 'Happy' Daniels. The
old-timer--your father, Chuck!"
He hardly heard her words. "My mother!"
"Sure, darlin', that's who it is. You can remember now, Chuck! You got
to remember."
"I do! I do!" he whispered.
She pushed him. The audience was still applauding.
"Go out and take another bow!" Elsie whispered vehemently. "Let 'em
rave an' then give 'em the encore."
He went back onto the stage. He bowed. His gaze was on the right-hand
box. His mother!
And then he saw her recognition; saw her half start to her feet and
then sink down again; saw her hands go out to him, and then saw her
shrink back as Dr. Adams whispered to her.
Chuck bowed; he retreated into the wings. He waited until the applause
was almost gone. He muttered to himself: "I'll sing it for 'em!"
* * * * *
A triumph swept him. A weight had suddenly vanished; freedom had come,
as though shackles were fallen away. Leslie West was gone! He knew
now, at last, that he was the real Chuck Daniels. Leslie West was the
phantom, the intruder. A flood of new memories were raging in Chuck. He
muttered: "That dirty crook West!"
But his thoughts were checked by the need for action. The stage was
waiting. He sang his song again:
"I've a dear old pal who's waitin'
In a cottage by the sea--"
He realized that he was singing it as never before. Lying there,
prone at full length, staring over the footlights; staring into that
right-hand box.
He was only vaguely conscious of the song. His memory was winging back.
This was his mother! He could see her smiling at him with tear-stained
face as he ended:
"I'm comin' back, I'm comin' back to you."
There was a genuine wild burst of applause when the song closed. The
detective leaned over and pulled the portières more closely to cover
the shrinking woman. His mother!
He found himself back in the wings, with Elsie's arms around him.
"Wonderful, darlin'! You lifted 'em out of their seats! You got 'em all
snifflin'."
He stammered: "You found her?"
"We sure did. It wasn't very hard. She was right there in Sea Cove,
Delaware. The name of the town you gave me last night."
"Of course! Of course she lives there! That's where I was born and
brought up."
"Oh, Chuck, you can remember it all now?"
His eyes were flashing. "That damnable villain West! Come on upstairs,
Elsie. I want to see my mother."
"They're bringin' her here."
"An' I want to see Dr. Adams right away! That man West--he's
diabolical!"
CHAPTER X.
OUT OF THE PAST.
In Chuck's dressing room he sat with his arms around his mother. "Easy,
moms! Don't cry! Here, Elsie, you take care of her. I got things to do,
moms. Here's the girl who's goin' to be your new daughter. You sit with
Elsie, an' listen, please don't cry. I got to talk to Dr. Adams--"
He turned to the physician and the detective. "You bet I'll give you
the dope now."
With swift vehement words he poured it out. It was almost the brief
history of his life. Not one life, but two! Chuck Daniels and Leslie
West, strangely merged!
Chuck was born in the little town of Sea Cove, Delaware, an only child.
His father was a famous vaudevillean. Charles "Happy" Daniels.
"An' he _was_ happy," Chuck explained. "Always smilin', laughin' at
life--wasn't he, moms? Gee, I remember him so well. An' then, right
at the height of his success, he was paralyzed. I remember it. I was
eight, ten years old maybe."
The dreams of further greatness for the stricken vaudevillean had gone
into his son, Chuck. He idolized his son. Taught him music, stage dance
steps, eccentric dancing--the crippled father sitting, singing and
beating time while the boy danced. And he taught the boy to love and
revere his mother.
Old Happy Daniels dreamed of the coming years when his boy would be a
headliner. And then, when Chuck was about sixteen, his father died.
Dr. Adams put in: "That was about the time that Dr. West got hold of
you?"
"Yes, sir. A month or so after father died. I was only a kid. Mother
an' I, alone--"
Chuck's mother was sitting with Elsie, a frightened, confused little
woman, dazed by all this. She murmured:
"I never knew where you went, Chuck, dear. I couldn't find you; I never
knew how to try to find you."
"How did this West get you?" McGuire demanded. "An' what did he want of
you? That's what we want to hear."
"I was sixteen. An overgrown, delicate boy. There was a picture of
me with father, published in the Sea Cove newspaper. It was captioned,
'_Happy Daniels's Son Training for Broadway_.' Dr. West saw it--he told
me that's how he heard of me; an' he wanted me--"'
Chuck faltered. He sat, groping. "Oh, I thought I had it all clear in
my mind."
"You have, lad," the doctor urged.
"Yes, I have--all the Chuck Daniels part. The Leslie West in me is
fading. I'm not afraid of him now. I thought I had it all. It's vivid
as a dream, but the Leslie West part, like a dream, gets away from me.
Dr. West was living in Royville, not far from Sea Cove. He saw that
newspaper picture of me. I can remember clearly that I was out walking
one night, not far from home--"
"The night you disappeared!" murmured his mother.
"Yes, moms. I was abducted. You know Sea Cove isn't much of a place.
The road was dark--I guess the automobile had followed me from home. It
drove up to me and stopped. Men seized me. I was taken to Dr. West's
home in Royville. Dr. West confronted me. I'd never seen him before. He
told me he was a doctor--a brain specialist. He said I was sick an' he
would help me. He forcibly gave me a hypodermic. Up here, in my arm.
His man Timmons held me. It was over in a minute. It was a drug, and it
knocked me unconscious. An' when I came to myself, I was Leslie West."
In the silence of the dressing room the strains of music from the stage
floated dimly up.
* * * * *
The doctor said at last: "You were Leslie West? You'd forgotten Chuck
Daniels?"
"Yes, it seems so. I was Leslie West. I couldn't remember anything at
first. Then I remembered a lot of confused things of past years as
Leslie West. My father told me--" Chuck started. "I don't mean that!
It's the Leslie West still in me that made me say that! I mean Dr.
West told me I was his son. He said I'd been sick, had had amnesia,
which was why I couldn't remember things. I got better, but the past of
Leslie West was always confused. It's all dim now--too dim for me to
put it into words. Then, after about six months I guess I must have had
a little glimmer of Chuck Daniels."
McGuire said tensely: "The drug was wearin' off?"
"Yes, I know now that's what it was. But Dr. West told me it was
another amnesia attack coming on. And he said I had delusions; that the
injections would cure me."
He told them of the next injection; and others, at intervals of six
months, keeping the Chuck Daniels in him submerged. Meanwhile he was
living his life as Leslie West. The family moved almost at once from
Royville to Tarlington, Connecticut. Chuck grew up as Leslie West, a
delicate, morbid youth, fearing, but respecting his father: loving
Mrs. West as his mother, but very strangely. They saw that love for a
mother--or at least the sense of obligation--was very strong in him. An
instinct, not of Leslie West, but from Chuck Daniels. And they played
upon it shamelessly.
"I understand it now," said Chuck. "She, Mrs. West, pretended she was
delicate. Her 'heart was bad.' You had to do always what she wanted or
her heart might kill her."
"What did she want?" McGuire demanded. "They're all in it together?
All of 'em, framin' you for some game of their own?"
"Yes, I guess so. They wanted me to marry Gloria Bates. We met her in
Tarlington when I was about nineteen. They picked her for me, but I
didn't love her. I never wanted to marry her. She knew it--I'm sure she
knew it, put like all the rest of 'em, she was forcin' me."
"Bunch of crooks," McGuire ejaculated. "That's clear enough. But what
have they got to gain?"
Chuck said: "I don't know. That's what we'll have to find out."
The doctor prompted: "Six months ago, when it was time for one of the
injections--"
"I quarreled with my--with Dr. West," Chuck finished. "It was about
Gloria. They had the date for the wedding set. I told them all that I
wouldn't go through with it. We quarreled. I must have run away, got to
New York, met Elsie--"
"I think I can explain this part of it," Dr. Adams interrupted. "That
drug put into you the personality of Leslie West. The memories were
implanted vaguely--by suggestion, perhaps. Maybe otherwise. Such a
thing has been done before. Legends of it permeate the history of
medicine. But this is no time for a medical lecture.
"This thing is fiendish; certainly illegal. West is a criminal. We
must bring him to justice."
"We will!" McGuire declared.
The doctor went on: "Substitution of personality! The personality of
Leslie West was introduced, and Chuck Daniels was submerged. But every
six months, as the influence of the injection began to wear off, the
real Chuck Daniels tried to assert himself.
"A horrible strain upon the nervous system. And upon the mind. It
brought on--at these six-month periods--a pseudo-amnesia, when the mind
would give way under the strain, trying to adjust itself to the warring
memories. An emotional disturbance, resulting in temporary blankness.
But if, when this emotional disturbance came on, the drug were again
injected, the mind was again temporarily relieved of its fight. Leslie
West was again uppermost. A condition that would last another six
months. Do you follow me, Chuck?"
"Yes, sir. I think so."
* * * * *
"I want you to understand this thoroughly. When you do, the last danger
of the Leslie West breaking out in you will be gone. A temporary
blankness. You had that, when you escaped from the West home six
months ago. It was time for the drug again, but you didn't take it.
You went blank. Elsie found you. There was no Leslie West environment.
The past stayed blank, save that you finally recalled your name Chuck
Daniels, and had within you the subconscious influence of your real
boyhood. You took to the stage. Your talent for it--your real father's
training--came uppermost."
"An' his love for his real mother," Elsie put in. "He wrote his mother
song, you know; you heard him sing it to-night."
The doctor nodded. "Yes. His subconscious longing for his mother. This
brings us to yesterday. The show by chance took him to Tarlington.
Familiar scenes. The influence of Leslie West was stimulated. The
after-effects of the stoppage of any drug comes in periodic waves.
That is well known. A drug addict may be cured--his drug entirely cut
off--but his greatest suffering comes after several months, at definite
periodic intervals.
"It was like that yesterday. Another time when the drug was due, had
arrived. You went blank yesterday in Tarlington. It did not last
long. The sight of Elsie--and of Dr. West and Gloria in the theater
lobby--brought back your memories. Chuck Daniels and Leslie West were
about equal within you, each struggling for mastery! Memories of them
were curiously blended, so that first you thought you were one and then
the other. If he had given you the drug last night--"
"But he didn't," said McGuire. "That's what he's after. He's got that
drug out there in the safe. If we can get it--tangible evidence!"
The strains of the orchestra playing the finale were audible.
"The show's about over," said Chuck.
"I'm goin' out there to Tarlington," McGuire declared. "We'll get into
that safe to-night. But there's no train out. Only forty miles, if we
had a good fast car."
"Mine," said Dr. 'Adams, "I have been known to drive fast." He was
smiling, a grim smile, and his gray eyes were smoldering.
"You'll go, doc?"
"Yes. And we'll want you, Chuck. You can handle yourself now?"
Chuck was on his feet. "Sure, I can. There's a lot about it I don't
understand yet. Things about Leslie West I can almost remember.
Horrible things! You think I'm goin' to let that Dr. West go free?"
"He's out front now," said McGuire. "Maybe he'll make a play to see
you. Or maybe we can beat him out to Tarlington. Say, you haven't got a
gat, have you, doc?"
"No."
McGuire flashed a small, ugly-looking automatic. "I only got this
one--but I can get two more in a hurry. Come on, we'll take a taxi. An'
I got to get some tools. Let's get started."
With the frightened girl and the old lady in their midst they left the
dressing room. Back stage was crowded with the disbanding chorus. The
place was a confusion of excited voices; the show was a hit.
"West may be outside," the doctor said.
McGuire cut in: "Let me talk to him!"
There were many people loitering about the stage entrance, but no sign
of West or any of his party.
McGuire and the doctor paused at the curb: Chuck stood with the two
women.
Dr. Adams said: "We'll take a taxi to your boarding house, Chuck--we'll
go there first."
They had decided to leave Elsie and Mrs. Daniels at the boarding house
for the night.
The three men would go on after Dr. Adams's car, and then for McGuire's
weapons and tools.
There were several taxis standing here near the stage entrance. One of
the drivers, seeing the group at the curb, drove his car forward and
opened the door.
"Wait, doc," MCGuire pushed the doctor back.
"Taxi, sir?"
"No, thanks.... We'll get one at the corner," said McGuire as the taxi
moved on. "He's probably OK, but what's the use of takin' any chances?"
* * * * *
At the corner they hailed a swiftly passing taxi and crowded in. It was
a short run up Broadway to Chuck's and Elsie's boarding house. The West
limousine, for which they had been looking, had not been seen. As they
turned into the cross street, McGuire said suddenly:
"Damned if I don't think that flivver's been trailin' us!"
A block behind them they could see an ancient sedan turn from Broadway
after them.
Their taxi paused at the boarding house entrance. The cross street here
was fairly deserted. The flivver had stopped nearly a block away, but
no one had seemed to leave it.
"Just sort of watchin'," McGuire grinned. "Fair enough. When we get in
your car, doc, we oughtn't have much trouble shakin' loose from that
bunch of tin.
"Listen, you and I better stay right here. If they ain't seen us yet,
no use of puttin 'em wise."
Chuck had said that he would take Elsie and his mother inside.
"Go ahead," McGuire added. "Come right back--we'll wait here. The
flivver can watch an' be damned to it. Don't worry for fear they'd
bother the women; it's you they are after. When they see you come out
an' drive away they'll lose interest in this house."
Chuck led Elsie and his mother up the steps. "Take it easy, moms, don't
be so excited. We'll be back in a few hours."
They mounted the stairs. Mrs. Peters was usually in bed at this hour,
and most of the lodgers had not come in yet. The house was dim and
silent. They came to the upper hall.
"This is my room, moms. Elsie, if she gets nervous or anything, you
better sleep in this room. Yours opens on the fire escape. But this one
is OK. You can lock yourselves in--but there's not a blessed thing to
be nervous over."
Chuck's bedroom door was partly open--no one bothered to lock doors at
Mrs. Peters's. They entered the bedroom, which was dimly illumined from
the street outside its front windows.
Chuck fumbled for the light switch. Before he could reach it, from
behind the wardrobe curtain the dark shape of a man appeared and leaped
on him!
CHAPTER XI.
THE ABDUCTION.
The thing took Chuck wholly by surprise. He jumped sidewise; but he was
unarmed; and he saw his assailant's leveled weapon.
"Throw up your hands, Leslie!" It was Timmons. "Up with 'em! I mean
it--I got orders to shoot this time. Quiet, you two--want me to kill
him?"
Elsie and Mrs. Daniels were standing stricken with fright. They had
cried out; but the bedroom windows were closed. The men in the taxi two
stories down could not have heard them.
Chuck's hands went up. "I have no gun, Timmons; easy." He felt suddenly
cold and calm; but his heart was pounding in his throat.
"Tell these women to get back." Timmons's free hand waved them.
"Over there, Elsie. Moms, don't get excited--it's all right--I know
this man." Chuck could see better now in the dim room. He stood tense
against the wall, hands over his head with Timmons's revolver leveled
at him.
Timmons rasped, "Sure it's all right." He came forward; his left hand
felt of Chuck's pockets. "We're going out. Leave the women here. You
two, get me straight! You stand where you are. A sound out of you, even
after we're gone, an' I'll shoot a chunk of lead into him. That mean
anything?"
"Yes," Elsie gasped.
"Back up," Timmons commanded Chuck. "Open that door! Soft--you're goin'
first. Take it slow--I'll tell you which way."
He backed Chuck into the hall and gestured. "In there."
They went into Elsie's bedroom. The window to the fire escape was up.
Chuck understood it now. Timmons had come up this way, making sure that
there were no lodgers on this upper floor.
"Out with you! Remember, you don't get away from me alive! One break
an' yow're finished. Straight goods, Leslie."
He thrust Chuck down the fire escape in advance of him. It was dark out
here; the fire escape descended to within some eight feet of the back
yard.
"Now drop off. I swear if you make a break--"
Chuck did not dare take the chance. He hopped to the deserted yard.
Timmons leaped down beside him. They crossed the yard, scaled a low
fence into a tradesmen's alley. It led to another street. A limousine
stood by the curb.
"In with you!"
The West car. Chuck gazed around the street. There were no pedestrians
near enough to notice what was going on. Timmons, with the revolver
pressed against Chuck, shoved him forward. The door of the car opened.
Hands gripped Chuck, pulled him in.
"So I've got you back, Leslie?" It was West's ironical voice, but with
a rasp to it that Chuck had never heard before. "Sit quiet! You think
you're Chuck Daniels? Is that it, young fellow? Well, all in good time
we'll fix that."
His weapon dug into Chuck. Timmons had slammed the door, climbed into
the driver's seat; the car rolled away.
They turned south on Tenth Avenue. They gathered speed. There was no
pursuit. It had all been swiftly done. Elsie, up there in the bedroom,
would not dare call out for a few minutes. McGuire and Dr. Adams were
still in the taxi, no doubt beginning to be impatient at Chuck's delay.
But their suspicions were concentrated on the lurking flivver.
Chuck heard his captors discussing that car. West had believed that
Chuck and Elsie would go home. His other manservant was in the flivver,
to allay Chuck's suspicion of any possible danger within the house--a
ruse which had worked. The man with the flivver doubtless knew that two
other men had been with Chuck in the taxi. But Timmons and West did not
seem to know it. The rest of West's party had gone to a New York hotel
for the night. The house out at Tarlington was deserted.
The car with Chuck and his two assailants threaded its way north
through the city, out into the country, speeding for the somber house
in the outskirts of Tarlington.
CHAPTER XII.
THE THING IN THE HIDDEN ROOM.
In the ground-floor library of the West home Chuck faced his two
captors. The big house was silent and menacing. It stood darkly
brooding under the huge somber trees. Over it a full moon struggled
with swiftly moving black clouds.
In the library the shadows lurked in the room corners. The shrouded
French windows that gave onto the terrace were dimly visible. The safe
against the interior wall, with book shelves beside it, was in shadow.
The single light stood upon the table. Its circular yellow sheen fell
upon Chuck's white face as he sat slouched in a chair where they had
flung him. His coat was off; his shirt sleeves torn back to bare his
arms. He sat close under the light.
In front of him Timmons stood with leveled weapon. The thick-set,
hunched figure of Dr. West moved about the room, opened the safe.
There was no escape. Chuck knew it. These men, whatever their purpose,
were desperate. Dr. West had gone too far now to retreat.
Chuck sat silent; tense and alert. Dr. West was going to give him
the injection. That much he knew. A few moments now, and he would go
blank--unconscious, to awaken as Leslie West. Dr. Adams and McGuire
would seek him out, of course. They would come out here.
Chuck's horrified mind pictured it. McGuire demanding Chuck Daniels.
How easily West could confront him! There would be no Chuck Daniels! A
docile, trembling young man who, Dr. West would say, looked like Chuck
Daniels possibly, but was Leslie West.
There was no influence of Leslie West in Chuck now. He sat cold and
tense, eying Timmons. What were these men after? His memory clutched
for it. He could almost reach it, but not quite.
Dr. West's footsteps echoed in the silence of the library. The safe
door grated as he opened it. He came back and stood before Chuck. His
hypodermic and a phial of drug were in his hand.
"In a moment more, Leslie--"
Chuck burst out suddenly, "To hell with that Leslie stuff! I'm not your
son; you know it! What do you want of me? What are you doing this to me
for?"
"Timmons--"
"I won't move!" Chuck interrupted. "He needn't worry, I don't want to
get a bullet in me."
Stalling for time. It flashed to Chuck--if he could hold them off long
enough--or if, perhaps, he could manipulate so that West stood for a
moment between him and Timmons; a sudden leap at West, Timmons would
not dare fire, then a rush for the French window. With his shoulder he
might plunge through it, chancing Timmons's following bullet--
But West kept to one side. He stood hunched; his hand holding the phial
and the hypodermic. His heavy face was grim; his eyes gleaming. He said
sardonically, "You don't understand? Why, I thought you did! Leslie
West understands."
"Well, I don't. What have you got there?" It might bring West forward.
But he did not move.
"A hypodermic. And your medicine." He added suddenly, "I don't mind
telling you, Chuck Daniels. It's the last time Chuck Daniels will ever
know anything!
"I made you my son, because I needed you in my plan. My son has to
be married; and Gloria is a nice girl. I can't imagine why you're so
stubborn that you won't marry."
Chuck managed a grim smile. "Am I supposed to understand that?"
If he could keep West talking! Anything but to have this drug forced
upon him.
West said abruptly, "Perhaps some of this talk will stay with you
and go into Leslie West. I hope so. I'm not going to fool with you
to-morrow. You're going to marry Gloria, you understand? And give her
and me the management of your affairs."
"Oh, am I?" It stirred a vague memory. "Why?"
"Because I tell you to. Your grandfather's money--that accursed will."
* * * * *
As though the words had tapped a hidden well of memories, the knowledge
of his purpose came to Chuck. It rushed out of the darkness of the
past. The will! Leslie West's grandfather had loved the boy. He
had left all his estate with a reputable trust company, to be held
until Leslie was of age. Dr. West had been allowed the interest, to
be expended for Leslie's upbringing. There was insanity in the West
family. The grandfather had feared it for Leslie. If, at twenty-one,
Leslie was mentally competent--and if he married--he and his wife were
to have the principal. If he died, or was not mentally competent, the
whole vast estate would go to endow a well-known institution for the
insane.
Comprehension was on Chuck's face. Dr. West saw it. "So you do
understand? I thought you would. A stake worth playing for, isn't it?
You think we're going to let nearly eight million dollars get away from
us?"
He turned toward the door. "Watch him, Timmons, a minute or two. I'll
be right back."
Chuck gasped, "Where are you going?"
"Sit quiet." West went through the library doorway. His heavy footsteps
echoed from the dark hall outside.
Timmons murmured, "If you move now--"
A sudden rush of stupefying horror was surging over Chuck.
The last memory barrier was broken. Dr. West had gone to that little
door hidden under the angle of the staircase. A secret panel, opening
into a room hidden there.
The lurking thing would come out--Dr. West would bring it back, take
those few drops of its blood and mix them with his strange drug, and
inject it into the veins of Chuck Daniels.
A thin voice sounded through the silent house, an eerie, treble cry.
Chuck stirred in his chair, and Timmons rasped:
"Easy! Damn you, sit still."
Dr. West's heavy footsteps were returning, mingled with the stumbling
sound of other footsteps.
Chuck gazed numbly. Leslie West! The real Leslie West! He came
stumbling into the library ahead of his father. A young man in trousers
and shirt open at the throat. He was as tall as Chuck, but frail,
with thin neck and overlarge head. At sixteen he might have looked
like Chuck Daniels. But he was emaciated now. He stood with twisted
shoulders and gangling arms, staring blankly. His face was pallid and
puffed, with vacant eyes, a frightened, twisted smile--a travesty of
Chuck's face.
Chuck's thoughts were whirling with memories of other times like this.
The real Leslie West! This defective, this imbecile! But with the
drug, and a culture from the blood of the imbecile, the personality
of Leslie was introduced into Chuck Daniels. Chuck recalled now Dr.
West's sneering technical explanation upon a similar occasion. Strange,
diabolical necromancy! But it was true. The virile, normal brain of
Chuck Daniels could withstand the imbecility of Leslie. A blending
of the two personalities made of Chuck an adult Leslie West, a sort
of might-have-been--a new Leslie West, who could pass inspection
as a sickly but mentally normal adult; could marry the scheming,
unscrupulous Gloria, and claim his grandfather's inheritance. And then
he could be coerced into yielding it up.
* * * * *
Dr. West's voice broke the silence. He gestured to his son.
"Stand over there, Leslie. You silly fool, I won't hurt you! When we
get through with this, I've got candy for you, sonny."
Chuck sat tense in his chair, with Timmons's revolver covering him.
And suddenly he became aware of a slight noise behind him. The French
windows! Some one out there--
The noise made Timmons turn his head, and the muzzle of his weapon
wavered. It was enough for Chuck. He turned in his chair. The table
light was within reach. It was a heavy bronze electrolier. He seized
it, jerked it loose from its wires, and flung it at Timmons's head.
The room sprang into darkness and confusion. Timmons's gun spat yellow
flame in a blinding flash at the wall. The lamp struck his head. He
crumpled and sprawled on the floor.
The French windows were, crashing. Dr. West had tried to escape from
the room. A stab of flame and a bullet caught him. He fell with a
scream of agony and lay motionless. In the darkness McGuire's voice
sounded:
"I got him! You all right, Chuck?"
Chuck stood panting in the darkness. As McGuire and Dr. Adams burst
through the broken windows, straggling moonlight came in. It illumined
the twisting, unconscious form of Timmons, and showed Dr. West lying
near by. And it gleamed pallid upon the figure of Leslie West. He stood
stricken, trembling; and suddenly he wailed with his gruesome, childish
treble, "He tol' me I could have some candy. I wan' my candy."
THE END.
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