And, indeed, it seemed to me to be a very extraordinary thing; and by no means a pleasant thing either. Very much the other way. It showed what I was capable of doing without being aware of it. I did not like it at all.
By the time I had regained some of my composure Mr. Townsend appeared to have regained some of his. He had called the waiter, from whom he was ordering brandy. I ordered brandy too--a shillingsworth; what they give you for sixpence would have had no effect upon me. We both drank before anything was said. Then Mr. Townsend looked at me over the top of his glass.
"May I ask, Mr. Tennant, what you know about Louise O'Donnel?"
The effect which the discovery of that name upon the sheet of paper--my sheet of paper--had had upon me was sufficiently capable of explanation. Only too capable. Why it should have affected Townsend surpassed my comprehension. I hardly knew what to answer when he put his question.
"Know! I know nothing."
"Is that so? Then how came you to write the name upon that scrap of paper?"
"I know no more than the man in the moon."
"Indeed. Then are you suggesting that its presence there is an illustration of the new kind of force which promises to be the craze--telepathic writing, don't they call it?"
This was said with a sneer. Something about the tone, the manner in which it was uttered, reminded me forcibly of some one I had heard quite recently elsewhere. The resemblance was so strong that it came to me with the force of a sudden shock. To whom could it be? It came to me in a flash; the stranger of the night before. Directly he had appeared at the carriage door he had reminded me of some one. Now I knew of whom. He was sitting in front of me at that moment--Mr. Townsend. His tone was the stranger's, his manner was the stranger's; even his face, in some strange fashion, was the stranger's too. The stranger wore side-whiskers and a moustache, he was older, he was not nearly so good-looking, he lacked Mr. Townsend's peculiar air of polish, but in spite of the differences which existed between them, there was the resemblance too. The more I stared--and I did stare--the more the resemblance grew. Mr. Townsend leaned towards me across the table. The attitude was the stranger's.
"Are you trying to think of where you heard the name before? I see that you have heard it."