Page:Weird Tales Volume 7 Number 3 (1926-03).djvu/80

366 have ever heard of befalling any man. Yes, here beside me, on my writing desk, lies tangible proof of what, to make the record complete for others, must be detailed at some length.

For tonight I am no longer what I was. I am no longer alone.

God, what a wonderful thing it is! Tonight, when by all the calls of good form, even decency, I should be torn by deep grief, I am in the grip of such emotions of joy that I can scarcely refrain from rushing into the streets shouting to everyone the glad, glad tidings.

born in Detroit, the son of Septimus Redfield, a manufacturer of carriages, who, on the advent of the automobile, sold out his plant and its good will to one of the big corporations, and who from then on until the time of his demise lived retired in a great graystone house he had built in the beautiful suburb of Woodmere.

I was one of Siamese twins, who, just after birth, were successfully separated by a noted surgeon. My twin brother and I bore striking resemblances to-one another, growing up of an equal height, both being tall, dark and brown-eyed.

One would have thought that two such brothers would make an equal impression upon their fellows. Such was never the case. My brother Philip made friends and admirers everywhere; I was always a nonentity. He was sought after, lionized. I was consistently ignored, was socially nil, no matter how I tried to please others or cultivated those traits of character that usually make a man not merely popular but substantially worth while.

From my earliest boyhood I could sense this baffling difference between us. At school I made much more progress with my studies than did Philip, but when I carried off honors it seemed to excite neither admiration nor envy in anyone. No one seemed to notice, let alone share, my little triumphs—save my mother. And that loving little gray soul slipped out into the golden west one summer's evening with the setting of the sun. When die was gone the cup of my loneliness was filled.

My father was not a hard man, but his heart was set upon Philip, and, like the others, he could see little worth while in me. He, however, faithfully kept the promise he had made to my mother and left to me by his will the old home in Woodmere with its trees and flowers that to me breathe of her gentle memory.

My twin brother Philip always held a supreme contempt for me, which he was never at great pains to hide, and on occasions of exasperation even worse meannesses stored in his back mind would be heaped upon me. Once we had words over the relative merits of two baseball pitchers, when he cried in a fit of temper: "Oh, what's the use of arguing with a dead one? Your opinion isn't worth anything! You never will be anybody, no matter what you do or say."

Those words hurt for a long, long time, for the subtle sting of the truth was in them.

At another time we were at play in the great front hall. It was an October afternoon, and the sunshine was filtering through the old-fashioned, stained-glass transom. Philip suddenly seized me and pulled me alongside of himself before a wall mirror where the shafts of sunlight played upon us.

"Look, Amos," he cried, "at our two faces. Notice the difference in our eyes?"

Gazing intently, I saw what fascinated him.