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Page 15
How I have endeavoured to find him. I am not an excessively rich man,
yet have I offered continually increasing rewards. I have advertised in
all the papers, and sought the aid of all the detective bureaus. At the
present moment, the rewards I have out aggregate over fifty thousand
dollars.
* * * * *
They say he was murdered. They also say murder will out. Then I say, why
does not his murder come out? Who did it? Where is he? Where is Jim? My
Jim?
* * * * *
We were so happy together. He had a remarkable mind, a most remarkable
mind, so firmly founded, so widely informed, so rigidly logical, that it
was not at all strange that we agreed in all things. Dissension was
unknown between us. Jim was the most truthful man I have ever met. In
this, too, we were similar, as we were similar in our intellectual
honesty. We never sacrificed truth to make a point. We had no points to
make, we so thoroughly agreed. It is absurd to think that we could
disagree on anything under the sun.
* * * * *
I wish he would come back. Why did he go? Who can ever explain it? I am
lonely now, and depressed with grave forebodings--frightened by terrors
that are of the mind and that put at naught all that my mind has ever
conceived. Form is mutable. This is the last word of positive science.
The dead do not come back. This is incontrovertible. The dead are dead,
and that is the end of it, and of them. And yet I have had experiences
here--here, in this very room, at this very desk, that--But wait. Let me
put it down in black and white, in words simple and unmistakable. Let me
ask some questions. Who mislays my pen? That is what I desire to know.
Who uses up my ink so rapidly? Not I. And yet the ink goes.
The answer to these questions would settle all the enigmas of the
universe. I know the answer. I am not a fool. And some day, if I am
plagued too desperately, I shall give the answer myself. I shall give
the name of him who mislays my pen and uses up my ink. It is so silly to
think that I could use such a quantity of ink. The servant lies. I know.
* * * * *
I have got me a fountain pen. I have always disliked the device, but my
old stub had to go. I burned it in the fireplace. The ink I keep under
lock and key. I shall see if I cannot put a stop to these lies that are
being written about me. And I have other plans. It is not true that I
have recanted. I still believe that I live in a mechanical universe. It
has not been proved otherwise to me, for all that I have peered over his
shoulder and read his malicious statement to the contrary. He gives me
credit for no less than average stupidity. He thinks I think he is real.
How silly. I know he is a brain-figment, nothing more.
There are such things as hallucinations. Even as I looked over his
shoulder and read, I knew that this was such a thing. If I were only
well it would be interesting. All my life I have wanted to experience
such phenomena. And now it has come to me. I shall make the most of it.
What is imagination? It can make something where there is nothing. How
can anything be something where there is nothing? How can anything be
something and nothing at the same time? I leave it for the
metaphysicians to ponder. I know better. No scholastics for me. This is
a real world, and everything in it is real. What is not real, is not.
Therefore he is not. Yet he tries to fool me into believing that he
is ... when all the time I know he has no existence outside of my own
brain cells.
* * * * *
I saw him to-day, seated at the desk, writing. It gave me quite a shock,
because I had thought he was quite dispelled. Nevertheless, on looking
steadily, I found that he was not there--the old familiar trick of the
brain. I have dwelt too long on what has happened. I am becoming
morbid, and my old indigestion is hinting and muttering. I shall take
exercise. Each day I shall walk for two hours.
* * * * *
It is impossible. I cannot exercise. Each time I return from my walk, he
is sitting in my chair at the desk. It grows more difficult to drive him
away. It is my chair. Upon this I insist. It _was_ his, but he is dead
and it is no longer his. How one can be befooled by the phantoms of his
own imagining! There is nothing real in this apparition. I know it. I am
firmly grounded with my fifty years of study. The dead are dead.
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