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Page 20
"He was," the Countess replied hurriedly, "the husban' of Mary Antonett,
an' they both got arrested and gilletined in the great French
revolution."
He was pretty certain that this was incorrect, but the Countess, after
all, was a mere instrument of higher intelligence, and she now made no
pretence of speaking otherwise than humanly.
"An' my controls say they'll leave me in a body if I take a cent less 'n
three dollars."
One of the controls seemed to be looking this very threat or something
like it from the medium's sharpened eyes.
Bean paid hastily, thus averting what would have been a calamity to all
earnest students of the occult. The advertisement, it is true, had
specifically mentioned one dollar as the accustomed honorarium, but this
was no time to haggle.
_Napoleon!_
"Don't furgit the number," urged the Countess, "an' if you got any
friends, I'd appreciate--"
"Certainly! Sure thing!" said the palpitating one, and blindly felt his
way into the night.
The same stars shone above the city street; the same heedless throng
disregarded them; disregarded, too, the slight figure that paused a
moment to survey the sky and the world beneath it through a new pair of
eyes.
_Napoleon!_
IV
He walked buoyantly home. He had a room at the top of a house in an
uptown cross-street. Having locked his door and lighted a gas-jet he
stood a long time before his mirror. It was a friendly young face he saw
there, but troubled. The hair was pale, the eyes were pale, the nose
small. The mouth was rather fine, cleanly cut and a little feminine. The
chin was not a fighter's chin, yet neither chin nor mouth revealed any
weakness. He scanned the features eagerly, striving to relate them with
vaguely remembered portraits of Napoleon. He was about the same height
as the Little Corporal, he seemed to recall, but an eagle boldness was
lacking. Did he possess it latently? Could he develop it? He must have
books about this possible former self of his. He had early become
impatient of written history because when it says sixteen hundred and
something it means the seventeenth century. If historians had but agreed
to call sixteen hundred and something the sixteenth century, he would
have read more of them. It was annoying to have to stop to figure.
Before retiring he went through certain exercises with an unusual
vehemence. He was taking a course in jiu-jitsu from a correspondence
school. Aforetime he had dreamed of a street encounter, with some
blustering bully twice his size, from which, thanks to his skill, he
would emerge unscarred, unruffled, perhaps flecking a bit of dust from
one slight but muscular shoulder while his antagonist lay screaming with
pain.
With the approach of sleep all his half-doubts were swept away. Of course
he had been Napoleon. He could almost remember Marengo--or was it
Austerlitz? There was a vague but not distressing uncertainty as to
which of these conflicts he had directed, but he could--almost--remember.
And he had been one who commanded, and who, therefore, would make
nothing of pricing a dog. He would enter that store boldly to-morrow,
give its proprietor glare for glare, and demand to be told the price of
the creature in the window. Napoleon would have made nothing of it.
* * * * *
The old man came noisily from his back room and again glowered above his
spectacles. But this time he faced no weakling who made a subterfuge of
undesired goldfish.
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