“He didn’t answer, and I called to him again, and then it came over me that we had attended the same banquet at my club, and that we had come home together—that is, I remembered the cab part of it—and I figured that he was asleep, and had either spoken my name in his sleep, or I had dreamed that I heard it.
“Well, I remained in that position, thinking things over and trying to get things clear in my mind for several minutes, and then I got up, stretched myself, looked at my watch, saw it was half-past two——”
“But you had removed your coat and vest. Where was your watch?”
“In my vest on a chair beside the couch.”
“All right. Go on.”
“My watch said half-past two. I felt rocky, so I turned out three or four of the lights, leaving only one of them burning, and went into my bathroom. In about three minutes I was in a cold bath, and nothing in this world ever felt so good as that did.”
“It pulled you together, too, did it not?”
“Amazingly. Things came back to me that I had totally forgotten—but still I was hazy about Orizaba’s presence in my room, and remembered nothing of the quarrel.”
“And then——”
“I finished my bath and passed back into my room, and so on through it to the sleeping-room which is just beyond. It was my intention to go to bed at once, but as I entered my bedroom there was a clock facing me, and the hands pointed to half-past three. I could not believe that I had been an hour in the bath, so I went back into the other room and took another look at my watch, only to discover that it still said half-past two, and that it had stopped. Then I thought that possibly it was run down, and I turned the stem, only to discover that the mainspring was broken. All the same, if I broke that mainspring at half-past two, I had not slept much more than half an hour in all, taking the time for the bath into consideration.”