The Man Who Was Two Men

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.

---

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?"

---

---

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.

---

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.

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.

---

"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.

---

"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.

---

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.

---

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."

---

---

"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:

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."

---

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!"

---

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:

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:

"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:

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:

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.

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.

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....

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:

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:

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:

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!"

---

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!

---

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.

---

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.