CHAPTER XIII



When I reached the hotel I found Miss Gage at the door, and
Kendricks coming out of the office toward her.

"Oh, here he is!" she called to him at sight of me.

"Where in the world have you been?" he demanded. "I had just found
out from the clerk that you hadn't come in yet, and I was going back
for you with a searchlight."

"Oh, I wasn't so badly lost as all that," I returned. "I missed you
in the crowd at the door, but I knew you'd get home somehow, and so
I came on without you. But my aged steps are not so quick as
yours."

The words, mechanically uttered, suggested something, and I thought
that if they were in for weirdness I would give them as much
weirdness as they could ask for. "When you get along toward fifty
you'll find that the foot you've still got out of the grave doesn't
work so lively as it used. Besides, I was interested in the night
effect. It's so gloriously dark; and I had a fine sense of
isolation as I came along, as if I were altogether out of my epoch
and my environment. I felt as if the earth was a sort of Flying
Dutchman, and I was the only passenger. It was about the weirdest
sensation I ever had. It reminded me, I don't know how, exactly of