[Michael Fane before Judge Jeffreys]
THE BLACK BOX
Prologue
My friends, beware of slim-legged, nimble-footed, white-faced men, in sober grey, who tell long tales! They make for mischief. Nor do I warn you without reason; for of such an one I reaped great trouble.
It was in the cool of a still June evening, as I rode leisurely among these pleasant Dorset lanes of ours, that I came upon him sitting on the roadside, beneath a larch tree, hugging his bony knees and muttering like a soothsayer.
His hat--an ancient, greasy thing--lay on the ground beside him; his grizzled hair seemed to grow upright on a strange-shaped head which ran into a veritable peak towards the centre; while his face was so lined and bloodless that it looked for all the world like crinkled parchment. As for his small, pale eyes, they rose and fell beneath a pair of quivering lids which kept time with his lips.
But what, I think, surprised me most was that although he must have heard me, he took no heed whatever--his lips and eyelids went on fluttering as though the road were empty.
All this was so unlikely and amazing that, on coming level with the fellow, I pulled up to look at him; yet, notwithstanding that I fairly blocked his view, he gave no sign of seeing me, but went on jabbering like the apes which sailors bring ashore. Verily, it seemed he must be either deaf and blind, or daft; therefore,
"What ails thee, friend?" I cried. To my no small astonishment he sprang up as one shot, and for a moment stood there staring at me in a lost, dazed manner; then, raising both hands to his egg-shaped head, he murmured:
"Save us! So I was not out there among the Indies?"