Page:Marsh--The seen and the unseen.djvu/102

78 wandering lunatic who should not have been suffered to be at large? He was standing at the other end of the carriage regarding me with his curiously mirthless smile. He did not look a lunatic; on the contrary, he appeared to be a person of even unusual intelligence. He was very tall. He was dressed from head to foot in black, after the undertaker fashion, which is so common in the United States. His cheeks were colourless, his eyes almost unnaturally bright With those two exceptions there was nothing about him which was in any way uncommon, and even pale cheeks and flashing eyes are not phenomenal

"Still, I am Francis Farmer."

His voice was not at all American; it was soft and gentle. Stooping, he picked up the pack of cards. He began, as it were, to fondle them with his hands.

"My cards! My own old cards! The tools which have so often won for me both bread and cheese! Is it strange that I should regard them almost as my own children, sir? That I should be careful where they are—to be always close at hand? I fashioned them with my own fingers. And so fine was the art I used that skilled eyes have beheld them many and many a time, yet never perceived a flaw."

"Do I understand you to say deliberately that you are Francis Farmer?"

"Indeed I am."

"Then at the next station at which we stop I will give information to the police. So notorious a rogue cannot be allowed to be at large."

"But Francis Farmer's dead."