"Were you able to settle in your own mind the question just now raised between us at your office?" I asked, after a momentary silence. "It may not be in order for me to ask, and you may not feel at all ready to answer me. If so, do not hesitate to rebuke my importunity, which springs entirely from my excessive interest in the matter."
"I will the more readily excuse you," was his reply, "because my answer must dash your client's hopes. Leighton Gillespie is not a victim of double consciousness. If he were, he would not remember in one state what passes in the other. Now, he does remember. Though he gives no explanation of what allures him into haunts so out of keeping with his usual associations, I caught the glint in his eye when I mentioned certain names. Leighton cannot deceive me. Moreover, Mr. Outhwaite, I cannot professionally state that in my opinion he is otherwise than completely sane, notwithstanding the tragic experience he once went through. I say tragic, because the surmise you indulged in concerning him was true. He was the man who flung himself upon the foot-rail of that plunging engine. He acknowledged it to me just now, and acknowledged, also, that he knew that those cars contained dynamite. A great and wonderful act for a man who had had no experience outside the club-room and the gymnasium."
"I respect heroism wherever I meet it," said I, slightly lifting my hat.
"And I," echoed the doctor; then as we turned down the street; "I do not comprehend Leighton or what has led him into this course of duplicity if not crime. A hero at one period of his life; a scamp, if not worse, at another! What are we to think of the man whose nature admits such contradictions! What are we to think of human nature itself! I declare I am sometimes baffled by its operations, and heartily wish that in this present instance I could ascribe them to an unsound mental condition."
I had no answer for this ebullition of feeling, so walked on silently till our ways divided. As he turned towards home, I took the shortest route to my apartments. But before entering them I dined in the café below, so that it was eight o'clock at least before I mounted to my rooms.
A man was sitting on the stairs waiting for me. As I stooped to unlock my door, he made known his errand. He was an officer in plain clothes, and he came to tell me that I was wanted at the earliest possible moment at the District Attorney's office.