“Now, my little visitor,” quoth he, “you have wearied me sufficiently for the present. Perhaps you yourself may also enjoy a little sleep.”
XI
I am seated in my room at a hotel in the city of New York. The proprietor told me that there is a large closet between my room and Sandy’s which was reserved and locked by the former occupant of these rooms. I dislike privacy within my own privacy.
Sandy went out early in the evening to get the necessary ingredients for the making of his sangaree, as I told him that I should like to have a fresh quantity on hand. He returned about two hours since and made me about a gallon of the mixture. After I drank a glass, I told him that I felt better, and that he might go out to see the sights of this great city. Sandy is always reluctant to leave me alone. I am sorry now that I allowed him to go out, for I have a prescience that an unusual coma is about to fall upon me. But why worry about the unknown? Where death is, said a philosopher, we are not. And where we are, death is not.
I arose and thought that I ought to lie down in an attempt to sleep, when I thought that I heard a knock upon a door. Oddly enough, it was not upon my outer chamber door, but upon the closet door within. Surely I was mistaken.
I removed my dressing gown and stretched myself upon the bed. To convince myself, I arose and went to the inner closet door, but as I took hold of the handle, I stopped.
“What a superstitious wretch you are,” I uttered unconsciously aloud to myself, “get to bed. For how could a human being be knocking at an inner closet door?”