'Pardon,' he said, 'I'm a bit rattled tonight. You see, I happen at
this moment to be dead.'

I sat down in an armchair and lit my pipe.

'What does it feel like?' I asked. I was pretty certain that I had to
deal with a madman.

A smile flickered over his drawn face. 'I'm not mad--yet. Say,
Sir, I've been watching you, and I reckon you're a cool customer. I
reckon, too, you're an honest man, and not afraid of playing a bold
hand. I'm going to confide in you. I need help worse than any man
ever needed it, and I want to know if I can count you in.'

'Get on with your yarn,' I said, 'and I'll tell you.'

He seemed to brace himself for a great effort, and then started on
the queerest rigmarole. I didn't get hold of it at first, and I had to
stop and ask him questions. But here is the gist of it:

He was an American, from Kentucky, and after college, being
pretty well off, he had started out to see the world. He wrote a bit,
and acted as war correspondent for a Chicago paper, and spent a
year or two in South-Eastern Europe. I gathered that he was a fine
linguist, and had got to know pretty well the society in those parts.
He spoke familiarly of many names that I remembered to have seen
in the newspapers.

He had played about with politics, he told me, at first for the
interest of them, and then because he couldn't help himself. I read