In his bedroom he undressed calmly. Once he laughed: “I despise those pretentious fools—bank officers and cops. I’m beyond their fool law. No one can catch me—it would take me myself to do that!”
He got into bed. With a vexed “Hang it!” he mused: “I suppose John would pray, no matter how chilly the floor was.”
He got out of bed and from the inscrutable Lord of the Universe he sought forgiveness—not for Jasper Holt, but for the denominations who lacked the true faith of Soul Hope Fraternity.
He returned to bed and slept till the middle of the morning, lying with his arms behind his head, a smile on his face.
Thus did Jasper Holt, without the mysterious pangs of death, yet cease to exist, and thus did John Holt come into being not merely as an apparition glimpsed on Sunday and Wednesday evenings, but as a being living twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.
III
The inhabitants of Rosebank were familiar with the occasional appearances of John Holt, the eccentric recluse, and they merely snickered about him when on the Saturday evening following the Friday that has been chronicled he was seen to come out of his gate and trudge down to a news and stationery shop on Main Street.
He purchased an evening paper and said to the clerk: “You can have the Morning Herald delivered at my house every morning—27 Humbert Avenue.”
“Yuh, I know where it is. Thought you had kind of a grouch on newspapers and all those lowbrow things,” said the clerk pertly.
“Ah, did you indeed? The Herald, every morning, please. I will pay a month in advance,” was all John Holt said, but he looked directly at the clerk, and the man cringed.