The Double Life Of Mr. Alfred Burton

by E. Phillips Oppenheim

"I felt convinced," he said gratefully, "that I should not make my appeal to you in vain. Tell me, what do you think of doing with the rest?"

"I am not sure," Mr. Waddington admitted, after a brief pause. "We are confronted from the beginning with the fact that there isn't a living soul who would believe our story. If we tried to publish it, people would only look upon it as an inferior sort of fiction, and declare that the idea had been used before. I thought of having one of the beans resolved into its constituents by a scientific physician, but I doubt if I'd get any one to treat the matter seriously. Of course," he went on, "if there were any quantity of the beans, so that we could prove the truth of our statements upon any one who professed to doubt them, we might be able to put them to some practical use. At present," he concluded, with a little sigh, "I really can't think of any."

"When one considers," Burton remarked, "the number of people in high positions who might have discovered these beans and profited by them, it does rather appear as though they had been wasted upon an auctioneer and an auctioneer's clerk who have to get their livings."

"I entirely agree with you," Mr. Waddington assented. "I must admit that in some respects I feel happier and life seems a much more interesting place. Yet I can't altogether escape from certain apprehensions as regards the future."

"If you take my advice," Burton said firmly, "you'll continue the business exactly as you are doing at present."

"I have no idea of abandoning it," Mr. Waddington replied. "The trouble is, how long will it be before it abandons me?"

"I have a theory of my own as to that," Burton declared. "We will not talk about it at present—simply wait and see."

Mr. Waddington paid the bill.

"Meanwhile," he said, "you had better get down to Garden Green as quickly as you can. You will excuse me if I hurry off? It is almost time to start the sale again."

Burton followed his host into the street. The sun was shining, and a breath of perfume from the roses in a woman's gown assailed him, as she passed by on the threshold to enter the restaurant. He stood quite still for a moment. He had succeeded in his object, he had acquired the beans which were to restore to him his domestic life, and in place of any sense of satisfaction he was conscious of an intense sense of depression. What magic, after all, could change Ellen! He forgot for one moment the gulf across which he had so miraculously passed. He thought of himself as he was now, and of Ellen as she had been. The memory of that visit to Garden Green seemed suddenly like a nightmare. The memory of the train, underground for part of the way, with its stuffy odors, made him shiver. The hot, dusty, unmade street, with its hideous rows of stuccoed villas, loomed before his eyes and confirmed his swiftly born disinclination to taking at once this final and ominous step. Something all the time seemed to be drawing him in another direction, the faint magic of a fragrant memory—a dream, was it—that he had carried with him unconsciously through a wilderness of empty days? He hesitated, and finally climbed up on to the garden seat of an omnibus on its way to Victoria.