“Well?”

“That is not all.  When I caught sight of his face I was completely amazed; for—­I must tell you—­it looked for all the world like you grown old, or, as I said to myself at the time, like a death-mask of you.”

“You—­you saw that?” exclaimed Julius, leaning against the window with a sudden look of terror which Lefevre was ashamed to have seen:  it was like catching a glimpse of Julius’s poor naked soul.  “And you thought—?” continued Julius.

“You shall hear.  Dr Rippon—­you remember the old doctor?—­had a sight of a man in the Strand the night before, who, he believes, was his old friend Courtney that he thought dead, and who, I believe, was the man I saw.”

Lefevre stopped.  There was a pause, in which Julius put his head out of the window, as if he had a mind to be gone that way.  Then he turned with a marked control upon himself.

“Really, Lefevre,” said he, “this is the queerest stuff I’ve heard for a long time!  This is hallucination with a vengeance!  I don’t like to apply such a tomfool word to anything, but observe how all this has come about.  An excellent old gentleman, who has been dining out or something, has a glimpse at night, on a crowded pavement, of a man who looks like a friend of his youth.  Very well.  The excellent old gentleman tells you of that, and it impresses you. You walk on the same pavement the next evening—­I won’t emphasise the fact of its being after dinner, though I daresay it was—­”

“It was.”

“—­You have a glimpse of a man who looks—­well, something like me; and you instantly conclude, ’Ah! the Courtney person—­the friend of Dr Rippon’s youth!—­and, surely, some relative of my friend Julius!’ Next day this hospital case turns up, and because the description of its author, given by more or less unobservant persons, fits the person you saw, argal, you jump to the conclusion that the three are one!  Is your conclusion clear upon the evidence?  Is it inevitable?  Is it necessary?  Is it not forced?”

“Well,” began Lefevre.

“It is bad detective business,” broke in Julius, “though it may be good friendship.  You have thought there was trouble in this for me, and you wished to give me warning of it.  But—­que diable vas-tu faire dans cette galere? You are the best friend in the world, and whenever I am in trouble—­and who knows? who knows?  ’Man is born unto trouble, as the sparks fly upward’—­I may ask of you both your friendship and your skill.  One thing I ask of you here:  don’t speak of me as you see me now, thus miserably moved, to any one!  Now I must go.  Good-bye.”  And before Lefevre could find another word, Julius had opened the door and was gone.

“If it moves him like that,” said the doctor to himself, through his bewilderment, “there must be something worse in it—­God forgive me for thinking so!—­than I have ever imagined.”

Chapter VII.