Ah, but wait a moment!... I sat up at my desk, vociferating the words aloud. Were we at such a dead end after all? Perhaps not....
And first of all I remembered that question I had asked him about the flash-lamp as he had stood behind the screen of rugosa roses on the Sunday afternoon. "Has there been a moment since yesterday when that lamp has been held as close as it could be held?" Again I saw his sudden pallor. Again I felt his clutch on my shoulder, again heard his faint "George—I've been trying to remember ... the lamp ... very close ... touching ... one intense brilliant spot ... but I swear I never moved it ... it was as if somebody took the torch out of my hand ... somebody meddled in my life...."
And he had made me go through his Saturday evening's programme again—his inspection of the Hogarths, his unusual wakefulness, the hour at which he had gone upstairs.
Only for a few moments on the Sunday morning had he seemed dimly to surmise that something of the last importance might have happened to him during the hours of darkness. He had then forgotten all about it.
Nevertheless, would not his next rejuvenation date, not the moment of the fact itself, but from that of the beginning of his realisation of it?
No—no—I was not quite right even yet. Even that moment of wild fear, so quickly gone again, was not the moment I sought. Even after that he might to all appearances have remained twenty-nine for some hours longer.
For his change happened while he slept, and I had not reckoned with that sleep that must come in between.
His next sleep had been, not in my house, but in Trenchard's loft.
Monday morning, July 5th, had been his new starting-point, and that day he had disappeared.
You have now all the material dates that I had. You know that in comparatively uneventful, unexciting circumstances he could go back four years in a night. And I have told you of the headlong rôle Julia Oliphant had taken upon herself.