“Then what makes you look round? You know there’s no living thing behind you, yet you keep turning your head to peer over your shoulder. You don’t see anything, but you can feel it just the same as I can. Ditson feels it, too. We all know it’s there, fellows. I’m afraid the thing will follow us the rest of our lives. I’m afraid we’ll never be able to get away from it.”
“For Heaven’s sake, cut that out!” entreated Ditson. “Like Lynch, I’m not superstitious, but I swear you’ve got my teeth chattering by your silly talk. I agree with you, Mike. This street is too dark.”
Hasten their footsteps as they might, they could not escape from the uncanny conviction that something silent and ghostly and terrible was hovering at their very heels. Even the better-lighted streets did not banish that feeling, and by the time they reached Fred’s the three were in a terrible state of funk.
CHAPTER XXXV.
AN APPARITION.
Not a little to their satisfaction, they found that one of the card rooms upstairs was unoccupied. Not wishing to be seen at the bar by acquaintances, as they were beginning to feel that their faces bore the stamp of guilt, they made haste to mount the stairs to that little room where they could seclude themselves and order such drinks as they fancied might steady their shaken nerves.
Mike and Duncan stuck to whisky, but Du Boise called for an absinthe frappé.
“There’s nothing like it,” he asserted. “I’ve tried everything when my nerves needed bracing.”
“It’s a deadly poison,” said Ditson. “I see they’re trying to pass a law in France that will make the manufacture of absinthe unlawful in one year and the sale unlawful in two years. Absinthe is one of the most potent influences in the degeneracy of the drinking people of France. Why, man alive, if you were to give a horse an ounce or two of absinthe, it would throw the animal into convulsions and might cause its death. If you yourself were to drink it the way you would swallow a drink of whisky, the chances are it would knock you stiff.”
At this Harold simply shrugged his shoulders and smiled a pale, bloodless smile.
“But that’s not the way to drink absinthe,” he said. “The man who drinks whisky that way simply throws it down his throat in order to get the effect. To get the effect of absinthe, you sip it slowly. If your nerves are in a bad state, if your luck is rotten, if the world has turned its face against you, just try a little absinthe. I need it this minute. It works like a magic charm. Gradually all the shadows disperse and flee away, the sun smiles upon you and the weeds beneath your feet blossom into the most lovely flowers. A sensation of peace and buoyancy and confidence and contentment gradually pervades your entire being. From a dark and dreary cave the world changes into a glorious, heaven-smiling paradise. There’s nothing quite like absinthe to accomplish this marvelous change.