Page:The Master of Mysteries (1912).djvu/411

 met Miss Manning again, and she still is urging him to take her to Chicago. But he has begun to be suspicious of her, and doubts if he ought to do it. He wants your advice."

Astro smiled. "You might tell him what I told you yesterday."

"Ah! but what's the use if he hasn't read The Dissociation of a Personality?"

"Then suppose you advise him to call on Doctor Herreschoff and ask his advice."

"Shall I, really? Who is he?"

"The most famous specialist on nervous diseases in America, who knows more of multiple or dissociated personality than any one living."

"Oh, I see. I'll tell him." And Valeska returned to the telephone to repeat the address.

"You understand now?" Astro asked.

"Of course. Miss Manning has a dual personality. In her normal state she does not, of course, recall Mr. Jenson. In her secondary state she appealed to him for help."

"Because she literally did not know where she was," added Astro. "Doubtless, from his story, while she was in Chicago her own normal self, she changed into the secondary character, in which she did not even know her own brother. She alternated between the two states, which may be called the A and the B. It is often the case that a mental or physical shock entirely changes the personality. That's what I thought of on reading of the accident at the subway station. No doubt she witnessed the accident. The shock broke up her personality, changed A, her normal state, into B. She had, no doubt, been B before, in Chicago.