“Keeban,” said Jerry, “is another me. Don’t you never have a Keeban, too?”
“No,” I said; but I had Jerry’s—that other imaginary boy, the duplicate of Jerry, who came to see us, whom we played with, who did extraordinary things and went away. Then, gradually, we dropped him; that is, Jerry ceased to mention him and we stopped having him “come.” I think I forgot him until we were in Princeton University together; a lot of us had been to New York over the week-end and after we’d been back a few days, Jim Townsend dropped into Jerry’s and my room, when Jerry was out, and said:
“Steve, I wouldn’t say a word against Jerry to anybody but you; but you ought to know how queer he is sometimes.”
“When?” I said.
“Last Saturday in New York; I was down on the east side with a bunch of our class, just knocking about the ordinary way, when we ran on Jerry in a rum lot, I tell you. He pretended not to recognize any of us; in fact, he was in a bunch that tried to rough us; we had rather a go. When it was over, I got at Jerry, he made me so damn mad going in with that lot of muckers against us. I told him what I thought and he looked at me as cool as could be. ‘Who do you think I am?’ he asked me, as though I didn’t know him in Bowery ‘suitings’; for he had on the whole get-up of his friends, Steve. I gave him up, I tell you; and he wasn’t drunk, either. Since he didn’t know me, I decided I wouldn’t know him, next time I saw him here; so I passed him outside just now without speaking. He came after me and asked why. I told him; and what do you suppose he did? Denied he’d even been on the east side Saturday; he said I hadn’t seen him; that wasn’t he.”
“It wasn’t, Jim,” I said. “Jerry was with me all Saturday on Broadway. We never got east of Fifth Avenue at all.”
“That’s right, Steve. Stand up for him; I would, too,” Jim said; and nothing I could say would shake him that he’d seen Jerry. He was so sure about it, and so were the rest of the bunch who’d been with him, that it got me wondering, particularly when I remembered later that Jerry hadn’t stayed with me all Saturday; we were separated for a couple of hours.
I said nothing to him about it; and it soon blew over until, a couple of months later, another bunch of fellows from the college ran into Jerry on the same side of town, but peacefully, this time; so peacefully, in fact, that he borrowed a hundred dollars from them. Said he would be in trouble down there unless he had the money. I heard about this from several men and then from Jerry.
“Tell me straight, Steve; do you believe I do queer things?” he asked me suddenly one night.