"He is not mad now, only weak in the head," replied Jorce professionally, "but he was certainly mad when he arrived. The man's brain is wrecked by morphia."
"Not by drink?"
"No; although it suited Mrs. Clear and Ferruci to say so. But Clear, as I may call him, was very violent, and quite justified Mrs. Clear's desire to sequester him. She told me that he often imagined himself to be other people. Sometimes he would feign to be Napoleon; again the Pope; so when he, a week after he was in the asylum, insisted that he was Mark Vrain, I put it down to his delusion."
"But how could you think he had come by the name, Doctor?"
"My dear sir, at that time the papers were full of the case and its mystery, and as we have a reading-room in this asylum, I fancied that Clear had seen the accounts, and had, as a delusion, called himself Vrain. Afterwards he fell into a kind of comatose state, and for weeks said very little. He was most abject and frightened, and responded in a timid sort of way to the name of Clear. Naturally this confirmed me in my belief that his calling himself Vrain was a delusion. Then he grew better, and one day told me that his name was Vrain. Of course, I did not believe him. Still, he was so persistent about the matter that I thought there might be something in it, and spoke to Ferruci."
"What did he say?"
"He denied that the man's name was anything but Clear. That the wife and two doctors—for the poor soul had been duly certified as insane—had put him into the asylum; and altogether persisted so strongly in his original story that I thought it was absurd to put a crazy man's delusion against a sane man's tale. Besides, everything regarding the certificate and sequestrating of Clear had been quite legal. Two doctors—and very rightly, too—had certified to the insanity of the man; and his wife—as I then believed Mrs. Clear to be—had consented to his detention."
"What made you suspicious that there might be something wrong?" asked Lucian eagerly.
"My visit to meet you, at Ferruci's request, to prove the alibi," responded Jorce. "I thought it was strange, and afterwards, when a detective named Mr. Link, called, I thought it was stranger still."