Holding him tight I got him from amongst the crowd for indeed at the time I thought him mad. In leading him up I began to recollect the story he had told me before. I wished to speak, but when I turned to him I beheld such a wild distortion of features that I shrunk from increasing his agony. I heard him groaning, every groan getting into the articulation, “My friend,” “My best friend,” “Surely I am mad,” “Take care of me, M‘Levy—I’m a maniac.” I didn’t think so now, yet I was upon my guard; and, as he was a strong man, I got a constable to take him by the other arm.
On arriving at the Office, which we did in the midst of a dense crowd, among whom the word “murder” sped from mouth to mouth, making open lips and wide staring eyes, I led him in. The moment he entered, he flung himself on a seat, and covering his eyes with his hands sent forth gurgling sounds, as if his chest were convulsed—rolling meanwhile from side to side, striking his head on the back of the seat, and still the words, “James, James, my old friend—O God! what is this I have brought upon me?”
“Is Imrie dead?” said I, watching him narrowly.
“Dead!” he cried, with a kind of wild satire, even light as a madman’s laugh; “up to the heft in his bowels.”
“Was it connected with the dream, William?” I said again; “why, it was James should have stabbed you.”
“The dream,” he ejaculated, as if his spirit had retired back into his heart; “the dream—ay, the dream. It was that—it was that.”
“How could that be?” I said again, for I was in a difficulty.
“His face, the very face he had when, in my dream, he plunged my own knife in me, has haunted me ever since. I told you that morning it was with me. I could not get rid of it, and when I saw him to-night sitting by me, I observed the same scowl. I thought he was going to seize my knife and stab me. I thought I would prevent him by being before him, and plunged the knife into his body.”
“Terrible delusion,” said I. “Imrie, as I told you, couldn’t have hurt a fly.”
“Too late, too late,” he groaned. “I know it now, and, what is worst of all, I’m not mad; I feel I am not, and I must be hanged. Nothing else will satisfy my mind—I have said it. If not, I will destroy myself—lend me my knife.”