V

The latest Napoleonic dynasty was tottering.  The more Bean read of that possible former self, the less he admired its manifestations.  A Corsican upstart, an assassin, no gentleman!  It was all too true.  Very well, for that vaunted force of will, but to what base ends had it been applied!  He was merciless to himself, an egotist and a vulgarian.  How it would shock that woman, as yet unidentified, who was one day to be the mother of the world’s greatest left-handed pitcher.  Take the flapper—­impossible, of course, but just as an example—­suppose she ever came to know about the Polish woman and the actress, and the others!  How she would loathe him!  And you couldn’t tell what minute it might become known.  People were taking an interest in such matters.  He wished he had cautioned the Countess Casanova to keep the thing quiet.  Probably she had talked.

He must go further into that past of his.  Doubtless there were lessons to be drawn from the Napoleonic episode, but just now, when he was all confused, the thing—­he put it bluntly—­was “pretty raw.”

“With Napoleon, to think was to act.”  So he had read in one chronicle.  Very well, he would act.  Again he would stand, with fearless eyes, at the portal of the vaulted past.

At eight o’clock that night he once more rang the third bell.  He had feared that the Countess Casanova might have returned to European triumphs, but the solicitations of the scientific world were still prevailing.

He stood in the little parlour and again the Countess appeared from behind the heavy curtains, a plump white hand at the throat of her scarlet gown.

He was obliged to recall himself to her, for the Countess began to tell him that his aura was clouded with evil curnts.

“You told me what I was—­last time, don’t you remember?  You know, you said, it was written on the slate what I was—­” He could not bring himself to utter the name.  But the Countess remembered.

“Sure; perfectly!  And what was you wishing to know now?”

She surveyed him with heavy-lidded eyes, a figure of mystery, of secret knowledge.

“I want you to tell me who I was before that—­before him.”

The Countess blinked her eyes rapidly, as if it hurried calculation.

“And I don’t mean just before.  I want to go ’way back, thousands of years—­what I was first.”  He looked helplessly around the room, then glanced appealingly at the Countess.  The flushed and friendly face was troubled.

“Well, I dunno.”  She pondered, eying her sitter closely.  “Of course all things is possible to us, but sometimes the conditions ain’t jest right and y’r c’ntrol can’t git into rapport with them that has been gone more’n a few years.  Now this thing you’re after—­I don’t say it can’t be done—­f’r money.”

“If I learned something good, I wouldn’t care anything about the money,” he ventured.