situated.  Accordingly I determined to enlist his services.  It was during July that, at my suggestion, he tried to procure copies of certain New Haven newspapers, of the date of my attempted suicide and the several dates immediately following.  My purpose was to learn what motive had been ascribed to my suicidal act.  I felt sure that the papers would contain at least hints as to the nature of the criminal charges against me.  But my purpose I did not disclose to my friend.  In due time he reported that no copies for the given dates were to be had.  So that quest proved fruitless, and I attributed the failure to the superior strategy of the enemy.

Meanwhile, my friend had not stopped trying to convince me that my apparent relatives were not spurious; so one day I said to him:  “If my relatives still live in New Haven, their addresses must be in the latest New Haven Directory.  Here is a list containing the names and former addresses of my father, brother, and uncle.  These were their addresses in 1900.  To-morrow, when you go out, please see whether they appear in the New Haven Directory for 1902.  These persons who present themselves to me as relatives pretend to live at these addresses.  If they speak the truth, the 1902 Directory will corroborate them.  I shall then have hope that a letter sent to any one of these addresses will reach relatives—­and surely some attention will be paid to it.”

The next day, my own good detective went to a local publishing house where directories of important cities throughout the country could be consulted.  Shortly after he went upon this errand, my conservator appeared.  He found me walking about the lawn.  At his suggestion we sat down.  Bold in the assurance that I could kill myself before the crisis came, I talked with him freely, replying to many of his questions and asking several.  My conservator, who did not know that I doubted his identity, commented with manifest pleasure on my new-found readiness to talk.  He would have been less pleased, however, had he been able to read my mind.

Shortly after my conservator’s departure, my fellow-patient returned and informed me that the latest New Haven Directory contained the names and addresses I had given him.  This information, though it did not prove that my morning caller was no detective, did convince me that my real brother still lived where he did when I left New Haven, two years earlier.  Now that my delusions were growing weaker, my returning reason enabled me to construct the ingenious scheme which, I believe, saved my life; for, had I not largely regained my reason when I did, I am inclined to believe that my distraught mind would have destroyed itself and me, before it could have been restored by the slow process of returning health.