"Wait a minute, please," said Summerson. He went back into the coat-room, disarrayed himself of his street wraps, and finally joined Dalrymple. His first words, low and grave, ran thus: "Can it be possible you don't recollect that our game of euchre was played the night before last and not last night?" Then he went with Dalrymple into a corner of the reading room, and they talked together for a good while.
Dalrymple went back to his home that day in a mental whirl. It still wanted a number of hours before the Governing Committee would meet. He had lost a day out of his life—there could be no doubt of that. If he had moved about the Club at all yesterday with a drunken manner, reviling De Pommereul to everybody who would lend him an ear—if he had afterward met De Pommereul in the Club and directed toward him in loud and furious tones a perfect torrent of accusation—he himself was completely, blankly ignorant.
For a good while he sat quite still and thought. Then he summoned Ann, the elderly and very trustworthy Ann, who had been his dear mother's maid, and was now his housekeeper. He questioned Ann, and after dismissing her he pondered her answers. Three times yesterday she had seen him, and regarding his appearance Ann had her distinct opinions.
Suddenly a light flashed upon Dalrymple while he sat alone and brooded. He sprang up and a cry, half of awe, half of gladness, left his lips. The baffling problem had been solved!
That evening he presented himself before the Governing Committee. All assembled were sorry for him. Of course, punishment must be dealt, but for an old and popular member like Dalrymple it must not be expulsion. The general feeling of the Club had indeed already been gauged, and it was in favor of suspension for six months or a year at the farthest.
Dalrymple, however, was determined that he should be visited with no punishment at all. And he meant to state why.
The judges, as he faced them, all looked politely grim. The President, after a few suave preliminaries, asked Dalrymple if he had anything to say concerning the charges preferred against him. Dalrymple then proceeded to speak with a clear voice and composed demeanor.
His first sentences electrified his hearers. "I have no possible recollection of yesterday," he began, "and it is precisely as much of a lost day to me as though I had lain chloroformed for twenty-four hours. On Wednesday night I returned home from this club and went to rest. I never really woke until Friday, possibly a little while after midnight, and then within my own bed. On Thursday morning I must have risen in a state of somnambulism, hypnotism, mental aberration, whatever you please, and not come to myself until Thursday had passed, and I had once more retired. Of what yesterday occurred I therefore claim to have been the irresponsible agent, and to have become so through no fault of my own. I am completely innocent of the misdemeanors charged against me, and I now solemnly swear this, on my word of honor as a gentleman."
Here Dalrymple paused. The members of the committee interchanged glances amid profound silence. On some faces doubt could be read, but on others its veriest opposite. The intense stillness had become painful when Dalrymple spoke again.
"I had hoped that I should escape throughout my own lifetime all visitations of this distressing kind. My grandfather and two of my uncles not only walked in their sleep to an alarming degree, but were each subject to strange conditions of mind, in which acts were performed by them that they could not possibly remember afterward." Here the speaker paused, soon continuing, however, in a lower and more reflective tone: