"I want you," he urged, "to jog your memory a little. Never mind the symptoms. Give me straightforward answers. Now—did you touch the new mirror, leaving it uncovered, at any time within the past few weeks?"
"Oh," was the answer, "the new mirror, is it! I knows well the uncanny thing was sure to make trouble for me. But I gives you my word, as I hopes to be saved, that I've never so much as brushed the dust off it, much less taken the curtain off. It's fearsome, is that mirror, I'm thinking. It's—"
"Then think back," pressed the Professor, again stemming the tide of the other's talk relentlessly, "think back: was anyone, ever, at any time, alone in Mr. Vane's rooms? Think, think!"
"I disremember," stammered Nevins. "I think not—Oh, wait! It was a long time ago, but I think a gentleman wrote Mr. Vane a note once, and I, having work in the other rooms, let him be undisturbed. But I told the master about it, the minute he came in, sir. He was not the least vexed, sir. Oh, I'm easy in my mind about that time."
"Yes, yes,—but the gentleman's name!" The Professor shook the man's shoulder quite roughly.
"His name? Oh, it was just Mr. Spalding-Wentworth, sir, that was all."
The Professor sat down with a laugh. Spalding-Wentworth! He laughed again.
Nevins had the air of one aggrieved. "Mr. Vane laughed, too, I remember, when I told him. Just the minute I told him, sir, he laughed. I've puzzled over it, time and again, why—"
The Professor left Nevins puzzling. There was no time to be lost. He remembered now that Spalding-Wentworth had for some time been ailing. The world, in its devotion to Orson Vane, had forgotten, almost, that such a person as Spalding-Wentworth had ever existed. To be forgotten one has only to disappear. Dead men's shoes are filled nowhere so quickly as in Vanity Fair; though, to be paradoxic, for the most part they are high-heeled slippers.
It took some little time, some work, to arrange what the Professor had decided must be done. He went about his plans with care and skill. He suborned Nevins easily enough, using, chiefly, the plain truth. Nevins, with the superstition of his class, was willing to believe far greater mysteries than the Professor half hinted at. By Nevins' aid it happened that Orson Vane slept, one night, face to face with the polished surface of the new mirror. In the morning it was curtained as usual.