Double Trouble

Deep in the Well where blushing hides the shrinking

and Naked Truth,

I have dived, and dared to fetch ensnared this Fragment

of tested Sooth;

And one of the purblind Race of Men peered with a curious Eye

Over the Curb as I fetched it forth, and besought me

to drop that Lie:

But all ye who long for Certitude, and who yearn for the

Ultimate Fact,

Who know the Truth and in spite of Ruth tear piecemeal

the Inexact,

Come list to my Lay that I sing to-day, and choose betwixt

him and me,

And choosing show that ye always know the Lie from the Veritee!

-The Rime of the Sheeted Spoorn.

"Baggs," said Mr. Amidon, "take things entirely into your own hands. I'm off."

"All right," said Baggs. "It's only a day's run to Canada; but in case I should prove honest, and need to hear from you, you'll leave your address?"

Mr. Amidon[1] frowned and made a gesture expressive of nervousness.

"No," said he, in a high-pitched and querulous tone. "No! I want to see if this business owns me, or if I own it. Why should you need to communicate with me? Whenever I'm off a day you always sign everything; and I shall be gone but a day on any given date this time; so it's only the usual thing, after all. I shall not leave any address; and don't look for me until I step in at that door! Good-by."

And he walked out of the bank, went home, and began looking over for the last time his cameras, films, tripods and the other paraphernalia of his fad.

"This habit of running off alone, Florian," said Mrs. Baggs, his sister, housekeeper, general manager, and the wife of Baggs-his confidential clerk and silent partner-"gives me an uneasy feeling. If you had only done as I wanted you to do, you'd have had some one--"

"Now, Jennie," said he, "we have settled that question a dozen times, and we can't go over it again if I am to catch the 4:48 train. Keep your eye on the men, and keep Baggs up in the collar, and see that Wilkes and Ranger get their just dues. I must have rest, Jennie; and as for the wife, why, there'll be more some day for this purely speculative family of yours if we-- By the way, there's the whistle at Anderson's crossing. Good-by, my dear!"

On the 4:48 train, at least until it had aged into the 7:30 or 8:00, Mr. Florian Amidon, banker, and most attractive unmarried man of Hazelhurst, was not permitted to forget that his going away was an important event. The fact that he was rich, from the viewpoint of the little mid-western town, unmarried and attractive, easily made his doings important, had nothing remarkable followed. But he had exceptional points as a person of consequence, aside from these. His father had been a scholar, and his mother so much of a grande dame as to have old worm-eaten silks and laces with histories. The Daughters of the American Revolution always went to the Amidons for ancient toggery for their eighteenth-century costumes-and checks for their deficits. The family even had a printed genealogy. Moreover, Florian had been at the head of his class in the high school, had gone through the family alma mater in New England, and been finished in Germany. Hazelhurst, therefore, looked on him as a possession, and thought it knew him.

We, however, may confide to the world that Hazelhurst knew only his outer husk, and that Mr. Amidon was inwardly proud of his psychological hinterland whereof his townsmen knew nothing. To Hazelhurst his celibacy was the banker's caution, waiting for something of value in the matrimonial market: to him it was a bashful and palpitant-almost maidenly-expectancy of the approach of some radiant companion of his soul, like those which spoke to him from the pages of his favorite poets.

This was silly in a mere business man! If found out it would have justified a run on the bank.

To Hazelhurst he was a fixed and integral part of their society: to himself he was a galley-slave chained to the sweep of percentages, interest-tables, cash-balances, and lines of credit, to whom there came daily the vision of a native Arcadia of art, letters and travel. It was good business to allow Hazelhurst to harbor its illusions; it was excellent pastime and good spiritual nourishment for Amidon to harbor his; and one can see how it may have been with some quixotic sense of seeking adventure that he boarded the train.

What followed was so extraordinary that everything he said or did was remembered, and the record is tolerably complete. He talked with Simeon Woolaver, one of his tenants, about the delinquent rent, and gave Simeon a note to Baggs relative to taking some steers in settlement. This was before 5:17, at which time Mr. Woolaver got off at Duxbury.

"He was entirely normal," said Simeon during the course of his examination-"more normal than I ever seen him; an' figgered the shrink on them steers most correct from his standp'int, on a business card with a indelible pencil. He done me out of about eight dollars an' a half. He was exceedin'ly normal-up to 5:17!"

Mr. Amidon also encountered Mrs. Hunter and Miss Hunter in the parlor-car, immediately after leaving Duxbury. Miss Hunter was on her way to the Maine summer resorts with the Senator Fowlers, to whom Mrs. Hunter was taking her. Mrs. Hunter noticed nothing peculiar in his behavior, except the pointed manner in which he passed the chair by Minnie's side, and took the one by herself. This seemed abnormal to Mrs. Hunter, whose egotism had its center in her daughter; but those who remembered the respectful terror with which he regarded women between the ages of eighteen and thirty-five failed to see exceptional conduct in this. His lawyer, Judge Blodgett, with whom he went into the buffet at about seven, found him in conversation with these two ladies.

"He seemed embarrassed," said the judge, "and was blushing. Mrs. Hunter was explaining the new style in ladies' figures, and asking him if he didn't think Minnie was getting much plumper. As soon as he saw me he yelled: 'Hello, Blodgett! Come into the buffet! I want to see you about some legal matters.' He excused himself to the ladies, and we went into the buffet."

"What legal matters did he place before you?" said his interlocutor.

"Two bottles of beer," said the judge, "and a box of cigars. Then he talked Browning to me until 9:03, when he got off at Elm Springs Junction, to take the Limited north. He was wrong on Browning, but otherwise all right."

It was, therefore, at 9:03, or 9:05 (for the engineer's report showed the train two minutes late out of Elm Springs Junction), that Florian Amidon became the sole occupant of this remote country railway platform. He sat on a trunkful of photographer's supplies, with a suit-case and a leather bag at his back. It was the evening of June twenty-seventh, 1896. All about the lonely station the trees crowded down to the right of way, and rustled in a gentle evening breeze. Somewhere off in the wood, his ear discerned the faint hoot of an owl. Across the track in a pool under the shadow of the semaphore, he heard the full orchestra of the frogs, and saw reflected in the water the last exquisite glories of expiring day lamped by one bright star. Leaning back, he partly closed his eyelids, and wondered why so many rays came from the star-with the vague wonder of drowsiness, which comes because it has been in the habit of coming from one's earliest childhood. The star divided into two, and all its beams swam about while his gaze remained fixed, and nothing seemed quite in the focus of his vision.

Putting out his hand, presently, he touched a window, damp with vapor and very cold. On the other side he felt a coarse curtain, and where the semaphore stood, appeared a perpendicular bar of dim light. A vibratory sound somewhere near made him think that the owls and frogs had begun snoring. He heard horrible hissings and the distant clangor of a bell; and then all the platform heaved and quaked under him as if it were being dragged off into the woods. He sprang upward, received a blow upon his head, rolled off to the floor, and--

Stood in the middle of a sleeping-car, clad only in pajamas; and a scholarly-looking negro porter looked down in his face, laying gentle hands upon him, and addressing him in soothing tones.

"Huht yo' haid, Mr. Brassfield? Kind o' dreamin', wasn't yo', suh?" said the porter. "Bettah tuhn in again, suh. I'll wake yo' fo' N'Yohk. Yo' kin sleep late on account of the snow holdin' us back. Jes' lay down, Mr. Brassfield; it's only 3:35."

A lady's eye peeped forth from the curtain of a near-by berth, and vanished instantly. Mr. Amidon, seeing it, plunged back into the shelter from which he had tumbled, and lay there trembling-trembling, forsooth, because, instead of summer, it seemed winter; for Elm Springs Junction, it appeared to be a moving train on some unknown road, going God knew where; and for Florian Amidon, in his outing suit, it had the appearance of a somnambulistic wretch in his night-clothes, who was addressed by the unfamiliar porter as Mr. Brassfield!

[1] Editorial Note: As reflecting light on the personal characteristics of Mr. Florian Amidon, whose remarkable history is the turning-point of this narrative, we append a brief note by his college classmate and lifelong acquaintance, the well-known Doctor J. Galen Urquhart, of Hazelhurst, Wisconsin. The note follows:

"At the time when the following story opens, Mr. Florian Amidon was about thirty years of age. Height, five feet ten and three-quarters inches; weight, one hundred and seventy-eight pounds. For general constitutional and pathological facts, see Sheets 2 to 7, inclusive, attached hereto. Subject well educated, having achieved distinction in linguistic, philological and literary studies in his university. (See Sheet 1, attached.) Neurologically considered, family history of subject (see Sheets 8 and 10) shows nothing abnormal, except that his father, a chemist, wrote an essay opposing the atomic theory, and a cousin is an epileptic. I regard these facts as significant. Volitional and inhibitory faculties largely developed; may be said to be a man of strong will-power end self-control. The following facts may be noted as possibly symptomatic of neurasthenia; fondness for the poetry of Whitman and Browning (see Nordau); tendency to dabble in irregular systems of medical practice; pronounced nervous and emotional irritability during adolescence; aversion to young women in society; stubborn clinging to celibacy. In posture, gait and general movements, the following may be noted: vivacious in conversation; possessed of great mobility of facial expression; anteroposterior sway marked and occasionally anterosinistral, and greatly augmented so as to approach Romberg symptom on closure of eyes, but no ataxic evidences in locomotion. Taking the external malleolus as the datum, the vertical and lateral pedal oscillation--"

The editor regrets to say that space forbids any further incorporation of Doctor Urquhart's very illuminating note at this place. It may appear at some time as a separate essay or volume.

From his eyne did the glamour of Faerie pass

And the Rymour lay on Eildon grass.

He lay in the heather on Eildon Hill;

He gazed on the dour Scots sky his fill.

His staff beside him was brash with rot;

The weed grew rank in his unthatch'd cot:

"Syne gloaming yestreen, my shepherd kind,

What hath happ'd this cot we ruin'd find?"

"Syne gloaming yestreen, and years twice three,

Hath wind and rain therein made free;

Ye sure will a stranger to Eildon be,

And ye know not the Rymour's in Faerie!"

-The Trewe Tale of Trewe Thomas.

As Mr. Amidon sensed the forward movement of the train in which he so strangely found himself, he had fits of impulse to leap out and take the next train back. But, back where? He had the assurance of his colored friend and brother that forward was New York. Backward was the void conjectural. Slowly the dawn whitened at the window. He raised the curtain and saw the rocks and fences and snow of a winter's landscape-saw them with a shock which, lying prone as he was, gave him the sensation of staggering. It was true, then: the thing he had still suspected as a nightmare was true. Where were all the weeks of summer and autumn? And (question of some pertinency!) where was Florian Amidon?

He groped about for his clothes. They were strange in color and texture, but, in such judgment as he could form while dressing in his berth, they fitted. He never could bear to go half-dressed to the toilet-room as most men do, and stepped out of his berth fully appareled-in a natty business sack-suit of Scots-gray, a high turn-down collar, fine enamel shoes and a rather noticeable tie. Florian Amidon had always worn a decent buttoned-up frock and a polka-dot cravat of modest blue, which his haberdasher kept in stock especially for him. He felt as if, in getting lost, he had got into the clothes of some other man-and that other one of much less quiet and old-fashioned tastes in dress. It made him feel as if it were he who had made the run to Canada with the bank's funds-furtive, disguised, slinking.

He looked in the pockets of the coat like an amateur pickpocket, and found some letters. He gazed at them askance, turning them over and over, wondering if he ought to peep at their contents. Then he put them back, and went into the smoking-room, where, finding himself alone, he turned up his vest as if it had been worn by somebody else whom he was afraid of disturbing, and looked at the initials on the shirt-front. They were not "F. A.," as they ought to have been, but "E. B."! He wondered which of the bags were his. Pressing the button, he summoned the porter.

"George," said he, "bring my luggage in here."

And then he wondered at his addressing the porter in that drummer-like way-he was already acting up to the smart suit-or down; he was in doubt as to which it was.

The bags, when produced, showed those metal slides, sometimes seen, concealing the owner's name. Sweat stood on Florian's brow as he slipped the plate back and found the name of Eugene Brassfield, Bellevale, Pennsylvania! A card-case, his pocketbook, all his linen and his hat-all articles of expensive and gentlemanly quality, but strange to him-disclosed the same name or initials, none of them his own. In the valise he found some business letterheads, finely engraved, of the Brassfield Oil Company, and Eugene Brassfield's name was there set forth as president and general manager.

"Great heaven!" exclaimed Florian, "am I insane? Am I a robber and a murderer? During this time which has dropped out of my life, have I destroyed and despoiled this gentleman, and-and run off in his clothes? I must denounce myself!"

The porter came, and, by way of denouncing himself, Mr. Amidon clapped his waistcoat shut and buttoned it, snapped the catches of the bags, and pretended to busy himself with the letters in his pockets; and in doing so, he found in an inside vest-pocket a long thin pocket-book filled with hundred-dollar bills, and a dainty-looking letter. It was addressed to Mr. Eugene Brassfield, was unstamped, and marked, "To be Read En Route."

There was invitation, there was allurement, in the very superscription. Clearly, it seemed, he ought to open and examine these letters. They might serve to clear up this mystery. He would begin with this.

"My darling!" it began, without any other form of address-and was not this enough, beloved?-

"My own darling! I write this so that you may have something of me, which you can see and touch and kiss as you are borne farther and farther from me. Distance unbridged is such a terrible thing-any long distance; and more than our hands may reach and clasp across is interstellar space to me. You said last night that all beauty, all sweetness, all things delectable and enticing and fair, all things which allure and enrapture, are so bound up in little me, that surely the very giants of steam and steel would be drawn back to me, instead of bearing you away. Ah, my Eugene! You wondered why I put my hands behind me, and would not see your out-stretched arms! Now that you are gone, and will not return for so long-until so near the day when I may be all that I am capable of becoming to you, let me tell you-I was afraid!

"Not of you, dearest, not of you-for with all your ardor of wooing (and no girl ever had a more perfect lover-I shall always thank God for that mixture of Lancelot and Sir Galahad in you which makes every moment in your presence a delight), I always knew that you could leave me like a sensible boy, and, while longing for me, stay away. But I-whom you have sometimes complained of a little for my coldness-had I not looked above your eyes, and put my hands behind me, I should have clung to you, dear, I was afraid, and never have allowed you to go as you are now going, and made you feel that I am not the perfect woman that you describe to me, as me. Even now, I fear that this letter will do me harm in your heart; but all the lover in me-and girls inherit from their fathers as well as from their mothers-cries out in me to woo you; and you must forget this, only at such times of tenderness as you will sometimes have while you are gone, when one embrace would be worth a world. Then read or remember this, as my return-clasp for such thoughts.

"Besides, may I not, now that you are away from me, give you a glimpse of that side of my soul which a girl is taught to hide? This was the 'swan's nest among the reeds' which Little Ellie meant to show to that lover who, maybe, never came. Ah, Mrs. Browning was a woman, and knew! (Mind, dear, it's Mrs. Browning I speak of!)

"Sometimes, when the Knight has come, and the wife wishes to show the glories of her soul, 'the wild swan has deserted, and a rat has gnawed the reed.' Let the wild and flowery little pool of womanhood which is yours-yours, dearest-grow somewhat less strange to you than it would have been-last evening-so that when you see me again you will see it as a part of me, and, without a word or look from me, know me, even more than you now do,

"Yours,

"Elizabeth."

Florian read it again and again. Sometimes he blushed-not with shame, but with the embarrassment of a girl-at the fervid eloquence. And then he would feel a twinge of envy for this Eugene Brassfield who could be to such a girl "a perfect lover."

"From one soon to be a bride," said he to himself, "to the man she loves: it's the sweetest letter ever written. I wonder how long ago she wrote it! Here's the date: 7th January, 1901. Odd, that she should mistake the year! But it was the 7th, no doubt. By the way, I don't know the day of the week or month, or what month it is! Here, boy! Is that the morning paper?"

He seized the paper feverishly, held it crushed in his hand until the boy left him, and then spread it out, looking for the date. It was January the 8th, 1901! The letter had been written the preceding evening. Whatever had happened to this man Brassfield, had occurred within the past sixteen hours. And, great God! where had Florian Amidon been since June, 1896? All was dark; and, in sympathy with it, blackness came over his eyes, and he rode into New York in a dead faint.

Cosimo: Join us, Ludovico! Our plans are ripe,

Our enterprise as fairly lamped with promise

As yon steep headland, based, 'tis true, with cliff,

But crowned with waving palms, and holding high

Its beaconing light, as holds its jewel up,

Your lady's tolling finger! Come, the stage

Is set, your cue is spoke.

Ludovico: And all the lines

Are stranger to my lips, and alien quite

To car and eye and mind. I tell thee, Cosimo,

This play of thine is one in which no man

Should swagger on, trusting the prompter's voice;

For mountains tipped with fire back up the scene,

Out of the coppice roars the tiger's voice:

The lightning's touch is death; the thunder rends

The very rocks whereon its anger lights,

The paths are mined with gins; and giants wait

To slay me should I speak with faltering tongue

Their crafty shibboleth! Most dearest coz,

This part you offer bids me play with death!

I'll none of it.

-Vision of Cosimo.

"Comin' round all right, now, suh?" said the learned-looking porter. "Will you go to the Calumet House, as usual, suh? Ca'iage waitin', if you feel well enough to move, suh."

"I'm quite well," said Mr. Amidon, though he did not look it, "and will go to the-what hotel did you say?"

"Calumet, suh; I know you make it yo' headquahtahs thah."

"Quite right," said Mr. Amidon; "of course. Where's the carriage and my grips?"

He had never heard of the Calumet; but he wanted, more than anything else then, privacy in which he might collect his faculties and get himself in hand, for his whole being was in something like chaos. On the way, he stopped the cab several times to buy papers. All showed the fatal date. He arrived at the palatial hotel in a cab filled with papers, from which his bewildered countenance peered forth like that of a canary-bird in the nesting-season. He was scarcely within the door, when obsequious servants seized his luggage, and vied with one another for the privilege of waiting on him.

"Why, how do you do?" said the clerk, in a manner eloquent of delighted recognition. "Your old room, I suppose?"

"Yes, I think so," said Mr. Amidon.

The clerk whirled the register around, and pointing with his pen, said:

"Right there, Mr. Brassfield."

Mr. Amidon's pen stopped midway in the downward stroke of a capital F.

"I think," said he, "that I'll not register at present. Let me have checks for my luggage, please-I may not stay more than an hour or so."

"As you please," said the clerk. "But the room is entirely at your service, always, you know. Here are some telegrams, sir. Came this morning."

He took and eyed the yellow envelopes with "E. Brassfield" scrawled on them, as if they had been infernal machines; but he made no movement toward opening them. Something in the clerk's look admonished him that his own was extraordinary. He felt that he must seek solitude. To be called by this new and strange name; to have thrust on him the acting of a part in which he knew none of the lines and dared not refuse the character; and all these circumstances made dark and sinister by the mysterious maladjustment of time and place; the possession of another man's property; the haunting fear that in it somewhere were crime and peril-these things, he thought, would drive him out of his senses, unless he could be alone.

"I think I'll take the room," said he.

"If any one calls?" queried the clerk.

"I'm not in," said Amidon, gathering up the telegrams. "I do not wish to be disturbed on any account."

Five years! What did it mean? There must be some mistake. But the break in the endless chain of time, the change from summer to winter, and from the dropping to sleep at Elm Springs Junction to the awakening in the car-there could be no mistake about these. He sat in the room to which he had been shown, buried in the immense pile in the strange city, as quiet as a heron in a pool, perhaps the most solitary man on earth, these thoughts running in a bewildering circle through his mind. The dates of the papers-might they not have been changed by some silly trick of new journalism, some straining for effect, like the agreement of all the people in the world (as fancied by Doctor Holmes) to say "Boo!" all at once to the moon? He ran his eyes over the news columns and found them full of matter which was real news, indeed, to him. President Kruger was reported as about to visit President McKinley for the purpose of securing mediation in some South African war; and Senator Lodge had made a speech asking for an army of one hundred thousand men in, of all places, the Philippine Islands. The twentieth century, and with it some wonderful events, had stolen on him as he slept-if, indeed, he had slept-there could be no doubt of that.

He found his hands trembling again, and, fearing another collapse, threw himself upon the bed. Then, as drowsiness stole on him, he thought of the five years gone since last he had yielded to that feeling, and started up, afraid to sleep. He saw lying on the table the unopened telegrams, and tore them open. Some referred to sales of oil, and other business transactions; one was to inform Brassfield that a man named Alvord would not meet him in New York as promised, and one was in cipher, and signed "Stevens."

He took from his pocket the letters of Brassfield, and read them. One or two were invitations to social functions in Bellevale. One was a bill for dues in a boating-club; another contained the tabulated pedigree of a horse owned in Kentucky. A very brief one was in the same handwriting as the missive he had first read, was signed "E. W.," and merely said that she would be at home in the evening. But most of them related to the business of the Brassfield Oil Company, and referred to transactions in oil.

He lay back on the bed again, and thought, thought, thought, beginning with the furthest stretch of memory, and coming down carefully and consecutively-to the yawning chasm which had opened in his life and swallowed up five years. Time and again, he worked down to this abyss, and was forced to stop. He had heard of loss of memory from illness, but this was nothing of the sort. He had been tired and nervous that night at Elm Springs Junction, but not ill; and now he was in robust health. Perhaps some great fit of passion had torn that obliterating furrow through his mind. Perhaps in those five years he had become changed from the man of strict integrity who had so well managed the Hazelhurst Bank, into the monster who had robbed Eugene Brassfield of-his clothes, his property, the most dearly personal of his possessions-these, certainly (for Amidon knew the rule of evidence which brands as a thief the possessor of stolen goods); and who could tell of what else? Letters, bags, purses, money-these any vulgar criminal might have, and bear no deeper guilt than that of theft; but, the clothes! Mr. Amidon shuddered as his logic carried him on from deduction to reduction-to murder, and the ghastly putting away of murder's fruit. Imagination threw its limelight over the horrid scene-the deep pool or tarn sending up oilily its bubbles of accusation; the shadowy wood with its bulging mound of earth and leaves swept by revealing rains and winds; the moldy vat of corrosive liquid eating away the damning evidence; the box with its accursed stains, shipped anywhere away from the fatal spot, by boat or ship, to be relentlessly traced back-and he shivered in fearful wonder as to how the crime had been committed. In some way, he felt sure, Eugene Brassfield's body must have been removed from those natty clothes of his, before Florian Amidon could have put them on, and with them donned the personality of their former owner.

And here entered a mystery deeper still-the strange deception he seemed to impose on the dead man's acquaintances. And this filled him, somehow, with the most abject dread and fear. Brassfield seemed to have been a well-known man; for porters and clerks in New York do not call the obscure countryman by name. To step out on the street was, perhaps, to run into the very arms of some one who would penetrate the disguise. Yet he could not long remain in this room; his very retirement-any extraordinary behavior (and how did he know Brassfield's ordinary courses?)-would soon advertise his presence. Amidon walked to the window and peered down into the street. His eyes traveled to the opposite windows, and finally in the blind stare of absent-mindedness became fixed on a gold-and-black sign which he began stupidly spelling out, over and over. "Madame le Claire," it read, "Clairvoyant and Occultist." Not an idea was associated in his mind with the sign until the word "mystery," "mystery," began sounding in his ears-naturally enough, one would say, in the circumstances. Then the letters of the word floated before his eyes; and finally he consciously saw the full sign stretching across two windows: "Madame le Claire, Clairvoyant and Occultist. All Mysteries Solved."

Florian stared at this sign, until he became conscious of deep weariness at so long standing on his feet. Then he saw, blossoming, the multiplying lights of an early winter's dusk-so numbly had the time slipped by. And in the gruesome close of this dreadful day, the desperate and perplexed man stole timidly down the stairways-avoiding the elevator-and across the street to the place of the occultist.