Page:John Uri Lloyd - Etidorhpa.djvu/50

 friend. I decided to go to the theater, and to the theater I went. The play was spectacular, "Aladdin; or, The Wonderful Lamp." The entertainment, to me, was a flat failure, for I was busy with my thoughts, and it was not long until my thoughts were busy with me, and I found myself attempting to answer a series of questions that finally became embarrassing. "Why did you make an appointment for ten o'clock instead of eight, if you wished to keep away from your apartments?" I hadn’t thought of that before; it was stupid to a degree, if not ill-mannered, and I frankly admitted as much. "Why did you make an appointment at all, in the face of the fact that you not only expected a visitor, but were anxious to meet him?" This was easily answered: because I did not wish to yield to what struck me as superstition. "But do you expect to extend your call until morning?" Well, no, I hadn't thought or arranged to do so. "Well, then, what is to prevent your expected guest from awaiting your return? Or, what assurance have you that he will not encounter you in the street, under circumstances that will provoke or, at the least, embarrass you?" None whatever. "Then what have you gained by your stupid perversity?" Nothing, beyond the assertion of my own individuality. "Why not go home and receive your guest in becoming style?" No; I would not do that. I had started on this course, and I would persevere in it. I would be consistent. And so I persisted, at least until nine o'clock, when I quit the theater in sullen dejection, and went home to make some slight preparation for my evening call.

With my latch-key I let myself into the front door of the apartment house wherein I lodged, walked through the hall, up the staircase, and paused on the threshold of my room, wondering what I would find inside. Opening the door I entered, leaving it open behind me so that the light from the hallway would shine into the room, which was dark, and there was no transom above the door. The grate fire had caked into a solid mass of charred bituminous coal, which shed no illumination beyond a faint red glow at the bottom, showing that it was barely alive, and no more. I struck a match on the underside of the mantel shelf, and as I lit the gas I heard the click of the door latch. I turned instantly; the door had been gently closed by some unknown