Last week I found her. And where? Haswell, she lives within three doors of my own home. She had lived there all the time. She had seen me many times before my fateful night, and she had seen me often afterward—always walking the earth normally like other human beings, save for that one astounding evening. She was willing to talk, and glad to discuss my case; she is a highly intelligent girl, I may say. She has since told me that on that evening she believed me to be drunk. It amused her, but it did not frighten her. That is why she did not go for help; she believed it to be a drunken whim of mine to walk around on my hands, and that it would pass in its own time.
That, Haswell, is the story of my amazing connection with the star Penelope. You will understand that nearly fifty years must pass before it will again be in perihelion, and by that time, probably, I shall be dead.
I am very glad of it; one such experience is enough. Perhaps also you will understand that I would not have missed it that once for all the worlds in all the solar systems.
“I think your friend was right,” I remarked, after a long silence. “You certainly were drunk, Raymond. Just as certainly as you are drunk tonight. Or did the whole thing happen tonight, as you went along?”
“Drunk?” he echoed. “Yes, I am drunk, Haswell—drunk with a diviner nectar than ever was brewed by man. Drunk with the wine of Penelope—the star Penelope. I have kept the best part of the story until the end. Next week Penelope and I are to be married. I am here tonight by her permission for a last bout with my old friend Haswell. It is my final jamboree. Congratulate me, Diccon!”
Of course, I congratulated him, and I did it sincerely; but the whole story still vastly puzzles me. Mrs. Raymond is a charming woman, and her name certainly is Penelope. But does that prove anything?
Almost Broke, Youth Falls Co-Heir to $12,000,000
Howard Girard, eighteen years old, had spent his last dime and was wondering where he could raise a bit of change. Then he got a job in a printing shop in Evanston, Illinois. And then, all at once, he got word that he had fallen co-heir to a $12,000,000 fortune left by his grand-uncle, Antoine Damange of Paris. Things like this have happened in romantic novels. They don’t often happen in actual life. Howard, notified of his remarkable good fortune, said, “Well, that’s pretty good,” and then announced his intention of sticking to his job at the printing shop. His share of the estate will amount to about $2,000,000.