‘Stop right there, Mr. Blake,’ called out Chalks in stentorian tones.  ’Don’t you say another word.  I’m going to hail you by your right name in half-a-minute.  I guess I must have recognised you the very first time I clapped eyes on your distinguished physiognomy; only I couldn’t just place you, as we say over in America.  But there was a je ne sais quoi in the whole cut of your jib as familiar to me as rolls and coffee.  I tried and tried to think when and where I’d had the pleasure before.  But now that you speak of a former state of existence—­why, I’m there!  It was all I needed, just a little hint like that, to jog my memory.  Talk about entertaining angels unawares!  The beard, eh?  And the yaller cloak?  And ain’t there a statue of you up Boulevard Haussmann way?  Shakesy, old man, shake!’

And Chalks got hold of his victim’s hand and wrung it fervently.  ’I’m particularly glad to meet you this way,’ he added, ’because I was Queen Elizabeth myself; and I can’t begin to tell you how sort of out of it I felt, alone here with all this degenerate posterity.’

Blake coldly withdrew his hand, frowning loftily at Chalks.  ’You should reserve your nonsense for more appropriate occasions,’ he said.  ’Though you speak in a spirit of foolish levity, you have builded better than you knew.  I am indeed Shakespeare re-incarnated.  My books alone would prove it; they could have been dictated by no other mind.  But—­look at this.’

He produced from an interior pocket a case of red morocco and handed it to me.  ‘You,’ he said, with a flattering emphasis upon the pronoun, ’you are a man who can treat a serious matter seriously.  What do you think of that?’

The case contained a photograph, and the photograph represented the head and shoulders of Mr. Blake and a bust of Shakespeare, placed cheek by jowl.  In the pointed beard and the wide-set eyes there were, perhaps, the rudiments of something remotely like a likeness.

‘Isn’t that conclusive?’ he demanded.  ’Doesn’t that place the fact beyond the reach of question?’

‘You’ve got more hair than you used to have,’ said Chalks.  ’I’m talking of the front hair—­your forehead ain’t as high as it was.  But your back hair is all right enough.’

‘You have put your finger on the one, the only, point of difference,’ assented Blake,

On our way home he took my arm, and pitched his voice in the key of confidence.  ’I am writing my autobiography, from my birth in Stratford down to the present day.  It will be in two parts; the interim when people thought me dead, marking their separation.  I was not dead; I slept a dreamless sleep.  Presently I shall sleep again; as men say, die; then doubtless wake again.  Life and death are but sleeping and waking on a larger scale.  Our little life is rounded with a sleep.  It is the swing of the pendulum, the revolution of the orb.  Yes, I am writing my autobiography.  So little is known of the private history of Shakespeare, conceive the boon it will be to mankind.  I shall leave the manuscripts to my executors, for them to publish after I have lain down to my next long rest.  Of special value will be the chapters telling how I wrote the plays, settling disputed readings, closing all controversy upon the sanity of Hamlet, and divulging the true personality of Mr. W.H.’