experience. A preposterous notion that I had seen this boy
somewhere before, a thing obviously impossible, was like a delicate
finishing touch of weirdness added to a scene fit to raise doubts
as to one's sanity. I stared anxiously about me like an awakened
somnambulist.

"I say," I cried loudly, "there isn't a mistake, is there? This is
Mr. Jacobus's office."

The boy gazed at me with a pained expression--and somehow so
familiar! A voice within growled offensively:

"Come in, come in, since you are there. . . . I didn't know."

I crossed the outer room as one approaches the den of some unknown
wild beast; with intrepidity but in some excitement. Only no wild
beast that ever lived would rouse one's indignation; the power to
do that belongs to the odiousness of the human brute. And I was
very indignant, which did not prevent me from being at once struck
by the extraordinary resemblance of the two brothers.

This one was dark instead of being fair like the other; but he was
as big. He was without his coat and waistcoat; he had been
doubtless snoozing in the rocking-chair which stood in a corner
furthest from the window. Above the great bulk of his crumpled
white shirt, buttoned with three diamond studs, his round face
looked swarthy. It was moist; his brown moustache hung limp and
ragged. He pushed a common, cane-bottomed chair towards me with
his foot.