He possessed youth, health, affluence and comeliness—and yet he was preparing to kill himself. Calmly and deliberately. In the shabby room of a shabby hovel.
With a penknife, he was ripping the bedclothes to ribbons and wedging them into chinks and crannies. At last satisfied that the room was as near gas-tight as he could make it, he stripped to his underclothing and sat down at the battered bureau and began to write:
“As soon as my dead body is found the newspapers will want to know why I did it. I’ll tell them. And they may scarehead it as much as they like. I don’t care. I’ve destroyed every clue to my identity, and though I am wealthy enough to be pointed to and stared at, there is not one in this vast city whom I know, not one who cares whether I am alive tomorrow morning, or dead.
“A love motive? Yes. But there is also something else—something equally potent to me, however weak and flimsy it may appear to others. I loved and do still love a girl whom I have known from childhood, but always there has been this thing that stood between us, and which is chiefly accountable for what I am about to do. It is not drink—nor gambling, nor hereditary disease.
“It is a Curiosity. An awful, overwhelming, unconquerable Curiosity. As far back as I can remember, I’ve had a terrible desire to know what follows death. As I grew up, this craving increased until it was a positive mania. I devoured every book on theosophy and kindred subjects I could lay hands on; I attended meetings of psychic societies; at college my avidity for psychology was remarked by everybody. At length I had reached the point where I yearned to tear aside the black veil of death and discover her secret. Why wait? I asked myself. Since you are bound to go some day, why not go now?
“One day I half-playfully voiced some such sentiment to her. It led to a dispute, which led to a violent quarrel; and that night she left the town where we both lived.
“I traced her as far as Chicago, and here I have lost her. For three years now I have searched the city for her, but not a trace have I found. And so I have given it up. It is hopeless. I shall never see her again.
“Like myself, she is alone in the world, but, unlike me, she is very poor. And somewhere in this great, monstrous city she is living even as I write these words—perhaps miles away—perhaps in the next block—perhaps ... God alone knows, and God protect her!”
He stopped, put down his pencil, and placed his hand before his eyes. Thus he sat for several minutes. The yellow gas flames flickered weirdly at either side of the shoddy bureau; the clangor of a distant street car reached him faintly; a motor-truck rumbled heavily in the street below; a bickering couple jawed and wrangled ceaselessly in the next room.
After awhile he picked up the pencil and went on: