To this the miserable Mystic made no reply. He saw that he was discovered and lost at one and the same time. Nothing but the scarcity of water in his organism restrained the now hopeless gentleman from tears.
He made one more attempt, one more appeal.
“Is there nothing, Oh, William K. Vanderhook,—is there nothing in our past friendship,—nothing of the past,—in memory that will melt or soften you?”
“Anything in memory to soften me? Well,—I—should—say—NIT. Every revolution of the second-hand on the dial plate of my memory drives another spike into the lid of your—figuratively speaking—coffin.”
“There was a time when I was soft. Oh, yes, I was soft! Five years ago I was softer than putty, softer than a bread-and-milk poultice or a batch of dough. But my friend, I’ve been baked since. Hard baked. It took a lot of kneading and a mighty hot oven, but I got myself baked, hard-brown, and I’ve got a cast-iron crust on me,—and don’t you forget it.”
“Yes, I admit I was soft, but that was long ago, before you made a profession of bamboozling silly women.”
“Memory—well I should say. D’ye think I’ve forgotten that inspired old Manhattan Mystic? Not much. I’ve been studying that same old muddle myself. Yes, sir, and I’ve got the volume right over there in my scientific library, in the section marked CRANKS,”—and Bill Vanderhook jerked his thumb disdainfully in the direction of the library.
“And hear me further, Lonnie boy. It was just my reading of your own High Joss, and it was out of his profound profundity that I dug your condemnation. And it is he, and not Bill Vanderhook, who has settled your eternal—hash.
“Now you hear me a minute. I’m going to do a little quoting myself. I spent days and nights wading through that illuminated slush to see if I could find any excuse for you. But instead of that I picked out the biggest spike in the lid.
“But, Gee, wasn’t it a job? My nerve nearly brought on paresis. I did have congestive chill, ticdouloureux, meningitis, lock-jaw and curvature of the spine. But I read it just the same, and here’s what your old misfit says. Listen, and when you strike that eternal oblivion take a day off and go back through your disintegrated, dissolved and scattered gray matter and see if you can remember anything like this,—