XXI DORIS ENTERS THE GLASS ROOM.
You see, I had remained sure up to this time that there were two of them. Now and then, for short periods, I had questioned myself about it; but always my certainty of Jerry, as somebody distinct from Keeban, won over my doubt. I would never grant that Jerry, my brother, could be guilty of what Keeban had done.
Then, if they were only one, why would Jerry warn me and send me to prevent the plan of Keeban, as he had sent me to the Sencort Trust?
“Here’s Jerry!” I said to myself, and that jump of my heart encouraged me. “He’s playing Keeban. He’s come for me.”
The normals nodded or gazed at him; he gave hardly a glance at them. He looked to Doris and came over to me.
My pulse had stopped jumping then, when I saw him closer. “He’s not Jerry!” I warned myself. “He’s Keeban!” And then my senses did another roundabout. “He’s Keeban and Jerry, too!” For here was a body which I was sure was Jerry’s and some one else possessed it. That some one must be the soul we’d called Keeban—Jerry and I. Here was Keeban who’d robbed Dorothy Crewe and thrown her in the street; here was Keeban who had shot Win Scofield for his insurance and had knocked me on the head when I called at Cheron Street; here was Keeban who had tried to kill, by poison gas, Strathon, Géroud and Teverson and the Sencort directors in their room. And here—in the sense, at least, that I felt him physically present—was Jerry, who had been brother of mine for twenty-five years. And his present purpose was to finish me.
“Well, Steve,” he said, “You did a good job.”
“All right, I guess,” I replied.