* * * * *

They say he was murdered.  They also say murder will out.  Then I say, why does not his murder come out?  Who did it?  Where is he?  Where is Jim?  My Jim?

* * * * *

We were so happy together.  He had a remarkable mind, a most remarkable mind, so firmly founded, so widely informed, so rigidly logical, that it was not at all strange that we agreed in all things.  Dissension was unknown between us.  Jim was the most truthful man I have ever met.  In this, too, we were similar, as we were similar in our intellectual honesty.  We never sacrificed truth to make a point.  We had no points to make, we so thoroughly agreed.  It is absurd to think that we could disagree on anything under the sun.

* * * * *

I wish he would come back.  Why did he go?  Who can ever explain it?  I am lonely now, and depressed with grave forebodings—­frightened by terrors that are of the mind and that put at naught all that my mind has ever conceived.  Form is mutable.  This is the last word of positive science.  The dead do not come back.  This is incontrovertible.  The dead are dead, and that is the end of it, and of them.  And yet I have had experiences here—­here, in this very room, at this very desk, that—­But wait.  Let me put it down in black and white, in words simple and unmistakable.  Let me ask some questions.  Who mislays my pen?  That is what I desire to know.  Who uses up my ink so rapidly?  Not I. And yet the ink goes.

The answer to these questions would settle all the enigmas of the universe.  I know the answer.  I am not a fool.  And some day, if I am plagued too desperately, I shall give the answer myself.  I shall give the name of him who mislays my pen and uses up my ink.  It is so silly to think that I could use such a quantity of ink.  The servant lies.  I know.

* * * * *

I have got me a fountain pen.  I have always disliked the device, but my old stub had to go.  I burned it in the fireplace.  The ink I keep under lock and key.  I shall see if I cannot put a stop to these lies that are being written about me.  And I have other plans.  It is not true that I have recanted.  I still believe that I live in a mechanical universe.  It has not been proved otherwise to me, for all that I have peered over his shoulder and read his malicious statement to the contrary.  He gives me credit for no less than average stupidity.  He thinks I think he is real.  How silly.  I know he is a brain-figment, nothing more.

There are such things as hallucinations.  Even as I looked over his shoulder and read, I knew that this was such a thing.  If I were only well it would be interesting.  All my life I have wanted to experience such phenomena.  And now it has come to me.  I shall make the most of it.  What is imagination?  It can make something where there is nothing.  How can anything be something