“Yes, you are a retrograde, a renegade, a blackguard and a murderer,” I said to him, calmly.

“All of those things, and much more,” he admitted, cheerfully and calmly.  “I am two persons, or more than two.  I can’t in the least make all this plain to you in your grade of intelligence.  Perhaps you have heard of exchangeable personalities?”

“I have heard of double personalities, and double lives,” I said, “but I have never admired them.”

“We will waive your admiration.  Let me say that I can exchange my personality.  The Jews used to say that men of certain mentality were possessed of a devil.  I only say that I was a student in India.  One phrase is good as another.  The Swami Hamadata was my teacher.”

“It would have been far better for you had you never known him, and better for many others,” was my answer to his astonishing discourse.

“Perhaps; but I am only explaining as you have requested.  I am a Raja Yogi.  I have taken the eight mystic steps.  For years, even here in this country, I have kept up the sacred exercises of breath, of posture, of thought.”

“All that means nothing to me,” I admitted simply.

“No, it means nothing for me to tell you that I have learned Yama, Niyama, Asana, Pranayama, Pratyahara, Dharana, Dyhana and Samadhi!  Yes, I was something of an adept once.  I learned calm, meditation, contemplation, introspection, super-conscious reasoning—­how to cast my own mind to a distance, how to bring other minds close up to me.  But,”—­he smiled with all his old mockery—­“mostly I failed on Pratyahara, which says the senses must be quelled, subdued and set aside!  All religions are alike to me, but they must not intrude on my own religion.  I’d liefer die than not enjoy.  My religion, I say, is to play the great games—­to adventure, and above all, to enjoy!  That is why I am in this country, also why I am in these grounds to-night.”

“You are playing some deeper game than I know?”

“I always am!  How could you be expected to understand what it took me years to learn?  But I suppose in your case you need a few practical and concrete proofs.  Let me show you a few things.  Here, put your hand on my heart.”

I obeyed.  “You feel it beat?” he said.  “Now it stops beating, does it not?” And as I live, it had slopped!

“Feel on the opposite side,” he commanded.  I did so, and there was his heart, clear across his body, and beating as before!  “Now I shall stop it again,” he remarked, calmly.  And I swear it did stop, and resumed when he liked!

“Put your hand upon my abdomen,” he said.  I did so.  All at once his body seemed thin and empty, as a spent cocoon.

“I draw all the organs into the thorax,” he explained.  “When one has studied under the Swami, as I have, he gains control over all his different muscles, voluntary and involuntary.  He can, to a great extent, cut off or increase the nerve force in any muscle.  Simple tricks in magic become easy to him.  He gains, as you may suppose, a certain influence over men, and more especially over women, if that be a part of his religion.  It was not with the Swami.  It is with me!”