“Excuse me,” said Kerner, with his wan, amiable smile; “was I talking to myself?  I think it is getting to be a habit with me.”

The Fool-Killer turned and walked out of Farroni’s.

“Wait here for me,” said I, rising; “I must speak to that man.  Had you no answer for him?  Because you are a fool must you die like a mouse under his foot?  Could you not utter one squeak in your own defence?

“You are drunk,” said Kerner, heartlessly.  “No one addressed me.”

“The destroyer of your mind,” said I, “stood above you just now and marked you for his victim.  You are not blind or deaf.”

“I recognized no such person,” said Kerner.  “I have seen no one but you at this table.  Sit down.  Hereafter you shall have no more absinthe drips.”

“Wait here,” said I, furious; “if you don’t care for your own life, I will save it for you.”

I hurried out and overtook the man in gray half-way down the block.  He looked as I had seen him in my fancy a thousand times—­truculent, gray and awful.  He walked with the white oak staff, and but for the street-sprinkler the dust would have been flying under his tread.

I caught him by the sleeve and steered him to a dark angle of a building.  I knew he was a myth, and I did not want a cop to see me conversing with vacancy, for I might land in Bellevue minus my silver matchbox and diamond ring.

“Jesse Holmes,” said I, facing him with apparent bravery, “I know you.  I have heard of you all my life.  I know now what a scourge you have been to your country.  Instead of killing fools you have been murdering the youth and genius that are necessary to make a people live and grow great.  You are a fool yourself, Holmes; you began killing off the brightest and best of our countrymen three generations ago, when the old and obsolete standards of society and honor and orthodoxy were narrow and bigoted.  You proved that when you put your murderous mark upon my friend Kerner—­the wisest chap I ever knew in my life.”

The Fool-Killer looked at me grimly and closely.

“You’ve a queer jag,” said he, curiously.  “Oh, yes; I see who you are now.  You were sitting with him at the table.  Well, if I’m not mistaken, I heard you call him a fool, too.”

“I did,” said I.  “I delight in doing so.  It is from envy.  By all the standards that you know he is the most egregious and grandiloquent and gorgeous fool in all the world.  That’s why you want to kill him.”

“Would you mind telling me who or what you think I am?” asked the old man.

I laughed boisterously and then stopped suddenly, for I remembered that it would not do to be seen so hilarious in the company of nothing but a brick wall.

“You are Jesse Holmes, the Fool-Killer,” I said, solemnly, “and you are going to kill my friend Kerner.  I don’t know who rang you up, but if you do kill him I’ll see that you get pinched for it.  That is,” I added, despairingly, “if I can get a cop to see you.  They have a poor eye for mortals, and I think it would take the whole force to round up a myth murderer.”