FullReads

“That would be rather dreadful, wouldn’t it?” I ventured. “We do dream such scandalous, such compromising things about people.”

“All that,” Wanhope gently insisted, “could have nothing to do with the fact. That alone is to be considered in an inquiry of the kind. One is never obliged to tell one’s dreams. I wonder”–he turned to the stranger, who sat absently staring into the fire–“if you happened to speak to your friend about his nightmare in the morning, and whether he was by any chance aware of the participation of the others in it?”

“I certainly spoke to him pretty plainly when we got into New York.”

“And what did he say?”

“He said he had never slept better in his life, and he couldn’t remember having a trace of nightmare. He said he heard me groaning at one time, but I stopped just as he woke, and so he didn’t rouse me as he thought of doing. It was at Hartford, and he went to sleep again, and slept through without a break.”

“And what was your conclusion from that?” Wanhope asked.

“That he was lying, I should say,” Rulledge replied for the stranger.

Wanhope still waited, and the stranger said, “I suppose one conclusion might be that I had dreamed the whole thing myself.”

“Then you wish me to infer,” the psychologist pursued, “that the entire incident was a figment of your sleeping brain? That there was no sort of sleeping thought-transference, no metaphantasmia, no–Excuse me. Do you remember verifying your impression of being between Worcester and Springfield when the affair occurred, by looking at your watch, for instance?”

The stranger suddenly pulled out his watch at the word. “Good Heavens!” he called out. “It’s twenty minutes of eleven, and I have to take the eleven-o’clock train to Boston. I must bid you good-evening, gentlemen. I’ve just time to get it if I can catch a cab. Good-night, good-night. I hope if you come to Boston–eh–Good-night! Sometimes,” he called over his shoulder, “I’ve thought it might have been that girl in the stateroom that started the dreaming.”

He had wrung our hands one after another, and now he ran out of the room.

Rulledge said, in appeal to Wanhope: “I don’t see how his being the dreamer invalidates the case, if his dreams affected the others.”

“Well,” Wanhope answered, thoughtfully, “that depends.”

“And what do you think of its being the girl in the stateroom?”

“That would be very interesting.”