a satisfactory opinion on the cases of others.  He even went so far as to examine as closely as possible into the history of table-turning, the uses ascribed to it by its votaries, and the results obtained from it by credible—­as opposed to merely credulous—­witnesses.  But he found no case that seemed in any way analogous to the strange case of Valentine.  As was only natural, the doctor did not forget the possibility of hypnotism, which had struck him during his second conversation with the lady of the feathers.  Her confused declarations on the subject of Valentine and Marr being one person, if they were really a true account of what Valentine had said to her—­which seemed very doubtful—­could only be made clear by accepting as a fact that the dead Marr had laid a hypnotic spell upon Valentine, which continued to exist actively long after its weaver slept in the grave.  But Marr and Valentine had never met.  This fact seemed fully established.  Valentine had always denied any knowledge of him before the trance.  Julian had always assumed that only he of the two friends had any acquaintance with Marr.  And again, when the doctor, one day, quite casually, said to Valentine, “By the way, you never did meet Marr, did you?” Valentine replied, “Never, till I saw him lying dead in the Euston Road.”

The doctor could see no ray of light in the darkness that could guide him to the clue of the mystery.  He could only say to himself, “It must be, it must be an obscure and horrible madness,” and keep his theory to himself.  Sometimes, as he sat pondering over the whole affair, he smiled, half sadly, half sarcastically.  For the event brought home to his ready modesty the sublime ignorance of all clever and instructed men, taught him to wonder, as he had often wondered, that there exists in such a world as ours such a fantastic growth as the flourishing weed, conceit.

Another matter that puzzled him greatly was this:  As the days went on, and as Valentine grew—­and he did grow—­more certain of his own power for evil over Julian, and as, consequently, he took less and less pains to hide the truth of his personality from the knowledge of the doctor, the latter was frequently seized with the appalled sensation which had long ago overtaken him when he was followed in Regent Street and in Vere Street.  This recurrence of sensation, and the certainty forced gradually upon the doctor that it was caused by the presence of Valentine, naturally led him to wonder whether it were possible that the man who had dogged his steps, and eventually fled from him, could have been Valentine himself.  If that were indeed so, then this madness—­if it did exist—­must surely have come upon Valentine before the trance.  Nothing but a madness could have led him thus in the night hours to steal out in pursuit of the friend who had just left his house and company.  But the doctor knew of no means by which he could satisfy himself of Valentine’s movements on the night in question.  To ask Valentine himself would be to court a lie.  Once the doctor thought for a moment of having recourse to Wade.  But then he remembered that the butler did not sleep in the flat, and had no doubt long gone home before the event of the night in question.  So, again, he was confronted with a dead-wall, beyond which he could see no clear view or comprehensible country.