The psycho-analyst says that the subconscious, which is always with us, working, never is actually foolish; it is interpretive, if you have the insight to understand it. Well, this was my subconscious expression. It was interpretive, true enough.
Now the spider, in my complex, was not that old woman; Doris was doing the spider in my dream.
Upon becoming aware that, though I lay on the edge of a red-plush parlor, I was not physically a fly, I felt over myself to find what was missing.
There should be something hard and heavy and extremely important under my coat in my right inside pocket. That region was soft and pliable now. Plates were lacking; that was it,—nice, new, counterfeit plates which I’d procured from under Doris Janvier’s lingerie in that Pullman on the Century and which I’d put in my pocket to return to her here at Number 120 Cheron Street with an idea of evangelizing her out of using them.
Phrases and periods from that talk I’d prepared for her came into my mind and mixed into the parade of other ideas which followed the spider-and-fly act. They gave me a laugh, anyway.
I lay, looked and listened. After a few minutes, I sat up. Apparently I had the house to myself. Also I had my watch and other personal possessions, everything except those plates.
I took a chance on rising; and still nobody disturbed me. Possibly I might have poked all over that house but I felt no overmastering impulse. The door and that street, on the other side of the pane with these nice, prim, old-fashioned curtains, looked very good to me. I got out and shut the door behind me. Over by the bridge I found a patrolman and asked him to take me to the nearest police station.
That was the place where I sketched to interested ears the essentials of what I’d done since leaving Chicago. I gave them all,—how I’d suspected her before she took the train, how I helped her get away at Cleveland; how I’d carried on the plates and went to return them, trusting to the patent leather platitudes I’d prepared to turn her to the paths of rectitude.
I gave them, with that last particularly, the laugh of their lives. They wanted to know if I actually expected she would meet me alone in a parlor to talk ethics with me.