Then, Saxon’s head came up, and into his eyes stole a confused groping, as though reason’s tentacles were struggling out blindly for something upon which to lay hold. With such a motion perhaps, the prehistoric man-creature may have thrown up his chin at the bursting into being of thought’s first coherent germ. But from “le Penseur” Saxon turned away with a futile shake of his head to resume his wanderings.
Finally, in a narrow cross street, he halted once more, and looked about him with a consciousness of vast weariness. He had traversed the length of many blocks in his aimlessness, crossing and recrossing his own course, and he was still feeble from long days of illness and inertia.
Suddenly, he raised his head, and his lips, which had been half-parted in the manner of lips not obeying a positive brain, closed in a firm line that seemed to make his chin and jaw take on a stronger contour. He drew his brows together as he stood studying the door before him, and his pupils were deeply vague and perplexed. But it was a different perplexity. The vacuity was gone.
Automatically, one thin hand went into the trousers-pocket, and came out clutching a rusty key. For another moment, he stood regarding the thing, turning it over in his fingers. Then, he laughed, and drew back his sagging shoulders. With the gesture, he threw away all imbecility, and followed the inexorable call of some impulse which he could not yet fully understand, but which was neither vague nor haphazard.
At that moment, Dr. Cornish, chancing to glance up from his course a block away, stopped dumfounded at the sight of his patient. When he had gathered his senses, and looked again, the patient had disappeared.
Saxon walked a few steps further, turned into an open street-door, passed the concierge without a word, and toilsomely, but with a purposeful tread, mounted the narrow, ill-lighted stairs. At the turning where strangers usually stumbled, he lifted his foot clear for the longer stride, yet he had not glanced down.
For just a moment, he paused for breath in the hall, upon which opened several doors identical in appearance. Without hesitation, he fitted the ancient key into an equally ancient lock, opened the door, and entered.
At the click of the thrown tumbler of the lock, some of the occupants of the place glanced up. They saw the door swing wide, and frame between its jambs a tall, thin man, who stood unsteadily supporting himself against the case. The black-bearded face was flushed with a burning fever, but the eyes that looked out from under the heavy brows were wide awake and intelligent.
“But Marston will one day return to us,” Monsieur Hautecoeur was declaring to Steele and the girl, who, with backs to the door, were studying a picture on the wall. “He will return, and then——”
