Page:Avon Fantasy Reader 17.djvu/50

RV 48 (THE NOTICEABLE CONDUCT OF PROFESSOR CHADD) "I had better state everything that occurred just as it occurred. This morning I was clearing away the breakfast things; my sisters were both somewhat unwell, and had not come down. My brother had just gone out of the room, I believe, to fetch a book. He came back again, however, without it, and stood for some time staring at the empty grate. I said, 'Were you looking for anything I could get?' He did not answer, but this constantly happens, as he is often very abstracted. I repeated my question, and still he did not answer. Sometimes he is so wrapped up in his studies that nothing but a touch on the shoulder would make him aware of one's presence, so I came round the table towards him. I really do not know how to describe the sensation which I then had. It seems simply silly, but at the moment it seemed something enormous, upsetting one's brain. The fact is, James was standing on one leg."

Grant smiled slowly and rubbed his hands with a kind of care.

"Standing on one leg?" I repeated.

"Yes," replied the dead voice of the woman, without an inflection to suggest that she felt the fantasticality of her statement.

"He was standing on the left leg and had the right drawn up at a sharp angle, the toe pointing downward. I asked him if his leg hurt him. His only answer was to shoot the leg straight at right angles to the other, as if pointing to the other with his toe to the wall. He was still looking quite gravely at the fireplace.

"'James, what is the matter?' I cried, for I was thoroughly frightened. James gave three kicks in the air with the right leg, flung up the other, gave three kicks in the air with it also, and spun round like a teetotum the other way. 'Are you mad?' I cried. 'Why don't you answer me?' He had come to a standstill, facing me, and was looking at me as he always does, with his lifted eyebrows and great spectacled eyes. When I had spoken he remained a second or two motionless, and then his only reply was to lift his left foot slowly from the floor and describe circles with it in the air. I rushed to the door and shouted for Christina. I will not dwell on the dreadful hours that followed. All three of us talked to him, ran after him, tried to soothe him, tried to rouse him, implored him to speak with us with appeals that might have brought back the dead, but he has done nothing but hop and dance and kick with a solemn, silent face. It looks as if his leg belonged to some one else or were possessed by devils. He has never spoken to us from that time to this."

"Where is Professor Chadd now?" I said, getting up in some agitation. "We ought not to leave him alone."

"Dr. Colman is with him," said Miss Chadd, calmly. "They are in the garden. Dr. Colman thought the air would do him good. And he can scarcely go into the street."

Basil and I walked rapidly to the window which looked out on the garden. It was a small and somewhat smug suburban garden; the flowerbeds a little too neat and like the pattern of a colored carpet; but on this shining