But McGuire performed strangely. He clapped one hand to his forehead and looked at his employer out of large, wild eyes. "Am I dippy? My God! Am I dippy?" he exclaimed, repeating the question over and over in a low, trembling voice.
"Apparently you are. Get in, damn you!" Benton ordered.
"It's weird," declared McGuire. "It's damned weird."
"Why, sir," he ran on, talking fast, now that the first shock was over and his tongue again loosened. "Either I've made a fool mistake, or else I'm crazier than hell. I waited at the place you said. You—or your ghost—came and took his seat, and waved his hand. I started the car for the bridge. He didn't say a word. At the bridge I jumped out. He was you—and yet you are here—same size—same costume—same beard—even the same beads around the neck."
They had almost reached the bridge and were slowing down when Benton, scanning the road, empty in the moonlight, grasped for the first time a definite suspicion of what had happened.
"Cara!" he shouted. "Good God, where is she?"
The chauffeur leaned over and shouted into his ear. "I'm telling you, sir. The lady's in that other car—with that other edition of you. And, sir—beggin' your pardon—they're beatin' it like hell!"
Benton's only answer was to feed gas to the spark so frantically that the car seemed to rise from the ground and shiver before it settled again. Then it shot forward and reeled crazily into a speed never intended for a curving road at night.
The moonlight fell on a gray streak of a car, driven by a maniac with a scarf blowing back from a turban over two wildly gleaming eyes.
Back at "Idle Times" a Capuchin monk, wandering apart from the dancers in consonance with the austere proclaiming of his garb, was studying the frivolous gamboling of a school of fountain gold-fish in the conservatory. He looked up, scowling, to take a note from a servant.