"'An now," he murmured, thickly, "'ere's to the mirror. May I never see it again as long as I 'as breath in my body and wits in me 'ead. Which," he observed, with a fatuous grin, "aint for long. No, sir; me nerves is that a-shake I aint good for nothin' any more. And I asks you, is it any wonder? 'Ere's Mr. Vane, one day, pleasant as pie. Next day, comes in, takes a look at that dratted mirror of the Perfessor's, and takes to 'igh jinks. Yes, sir, 'igh jinks, very 'igh jinks. 'As pink tea-fights in his rooms, 'angs up pictures I wouldn't let me own father see—no, sir, not if 'e begged me on his bended knee, I wouldn't—and wears what you might call a tenor voice. Then—one day, while you says 'One for his Nob' 'e's 'imself again. An' it's always the mirror this, an' the mirror that. I must look out for it, an' it mustn't be touched, and nobody must come in. And what's the result of it all? Me nerves is gone, and me self-respect is gone, and I'm a poor miserable drunkard!"
He gulped down some of his misery.
"Join me," said a voice nearby, "in another of those things!"
Nevins turned, with a swaying motion, to note Moncreith, whose hand was pointing to the empty glass before Nevins.
"You are quite right," he went on, when the other's glass had been filled again, "Mr. Vane's conduct has been most scandalous of late. You say he has a mirror?"
All circumspection had long since passed from Nevins. He was simply an individual with a grievance. The many episodes that, in his filmy mind, seemed to center about that mirror, shifted and twisted in him to where they forced utterance. He began to talk, circuitously, wildly, rapidly, of the many things that rankled in him. He told all he knew, all he had observed. From out of the mass of inane, not pertinent ramblings, Moncreith caught a glimmer of the facts.
What a terrible power this must be that was in Orson Vane's possession! Moncreith shuddered at the thought. Why, the man might turn himself, in all but externals—and what, after all, was the husk, the shell, the body?—into the finest wit, the most lovable hero of his time; he might fare about the world wrecking now this, now that, happiness; he might win—perhaps he actually had, even now, won Jeannette Vanlief? If he had, if—perhaps there was yet time! There was need for sharp, desperate action.
He plunged out of the place and toward Vanthuysen Square. Then he remembered that he could not get in. He aroused Nevins from his brutish doze. He dragged him over the intervening space. Nevins gave him the key, and dropped into one of the hall chairs. Moncreith leaped upstairs, and entered the room where the mirror stood, white, silent, stately.
He contemplated everything for a time. He conjured up the picture he had been able to piece together from the rambling monologues of Nevins. He wondered whether to simply smash in the mirrors—he would destroy them all, to make sure—by taking a chair-leg to them, or whether he would carefully pour some acid over them.
The simpler plan appealed most to him. It was the quickest, the most thorough. He took a little wooden chair that stood by an ebon escritoire, swung it high in the air and brought it with a shattering crash upon the face of the Professor's mirror.