Page:The Thrill Book Volume 1 Issue 1 (1919-03-01).djvu/34

32 Panton flew across to the bed.

“Get out of that, he said. “I’m going to stand no more.”

He took him by the hair, and pulled it, and immediately felt as though a monkey were seated on his own head tugging at his scalp.

“Hang!” he said.

“You're apparently quite unteachable, When will you grasp that we're each other! Get into bed, and don’t be a fool!”

“How long are you going to stay here?”

“I haven't the least idea. It wouldn't have happened if you hadn't fallen downstairs. You did it.”

“Are you going to blame me for everything?”

“Well, it's always been necessary so far.”

“But what on earth will my wife say if you don’t go soon?”

“Does it much matter what our wife says?”

“But she won't know which is which! She'll take you for me!”

“Well, I am you.”

“Confound you!”

“You've been trying to do that for a long time.”

“Look here, old chap, you really must go and find your home.”

“My home is where you are. We've never been separated yet, and I’m not going to begin now.”

He got up from the bed, and went over to the looking-glass, holding the candle, which he took from Panton.

“Come and look,” he said. “Now, which of us is which?”

“Heaven only knows.”

“Then why not make the best of it?”

“It's no good. You'll have to go.” He took him by the shoulder, and then turned suddenly over his own, for it seemed to him that he, too, had been suddenly grasped.

“You'll get used to that. Supposing you were in the city, and I fell over the coal bucket while I was filling it for our wife, you’d have just the same sensations. No doubt in time it won't startle you, though I dare say at first, till you get used to being in one place and feeling you're in another as well, you'll have some bad few minutes. It’s rather a lot to pay, isn’t it, for that last glass of whisky ?”

“You don't mean all this, do you? It isn’t really true, is it?”

“It’s very difficult indeed to know what truth is. I’m just telling you my theory. You don’t seem to remember it’s just as startling for me as for you. Now, come to bed. Come along, there’s nothing to be got by sitting up all night arguing, and I find cold a most distressing sensation.”

Finally, because there really was nothing else to do, he did get into bed, but his sleep was broken, for again and again the stranger woke him up to ask him, apparently merely from philosophic curiosity, why he had done various things in their common past.

“You mustn't mind,” he said, “but I’ve never had an opportunity of cross-examining you till now, because when your part of our brain was awake it was always so occupied with funny, unessential things that I never could get it to listen to my part. Why did you think it worth while, for instance, to tell our wife—”

“She isn’t our wife; she’s my wife!”

“Do you mind leaving that to settle itself when she returns ? Talking about that, you could very easily let her have another fiver to enjoy herself. She doesn’t have such a good time with us, you know, and even now, on her holiday, she’s got the children dragging after her. We'll send her another five dollars in the morning.”

“Oh, will we?”

“Yes. I'll come to the bank with you, and see you do it.”

“Look here, is it my money or yours?”

“It’s ours. There's another thing. Before you can go back to business you'll have to order yourself some clothes, or buy some ready made, because you're half the size you used to be. Order a suit for me while you're about it. Our wife would find it most inconvenient if I had to stay in bed all day.”

“I'll be shot if I do!”

“No, you won't. You'll be followed everywhere by your double in a blanket until you give in. I shan’t mind, if you don't.”

“This is merely absurd. I'm going to sleep.”

“Yes, you need it.”

But ten minutes later he wakened him again.

“Why do you tell so many lies?” he asked.

“I don't.”

“But you do. You told our employer only three days ago that you had urgent private business to do when, as a matter of fact, you only wanted to see a professional billiard match. If you’d told him that he'd have let you go, because he’s quite a decent sort, and he'd have respected you all the more of telling the truth. That's true, isn’t it?”

“I suppose it is.”

“Then why did you lie?”

“I don’t know.”

III.

HIS sort of thing went on all night, and in the morning Mr. Panton was feverish and weary. He felt hungry and not hungry at the same time. The not hungry was Panton (A) and the hungry was Panton (B). He went down to breakfast as soon as his ears told him that the charwoman had prepared it. Panton (B) went with him, wrapped in the eiderdown, and perfectly unembarrassed.

The charwoman looked round and saw them.

“Ere, you boys, who—”

She looked once more, screamed, rushed to the kitchen for her outdoor things, and ran down the street carrying them, firm in her resolution never to revisit that house, for she had no stomach for horrible duplications and shrinkings of respectable city men.

“Now see what you've done!”

The creature in the eiderdown looked at him patiently.

“If the woman had been philosophical enough to wait, I could have explained it to her.”

“But she wasn’t. You couldn't expect her to be, and now you've lost us a perfectly good charwoman, a real treasure, as my wife calls her.”

“I will explain to our wife.”

“You won't be here when she comes back.”