Part 38 (1/2)

”Where, indeed?” echoed Penny Wise.

CHAPTER XIV

A Prophecy Fulfilled

Among the pa.s.sengers disembarking from a steamer at a Brooklyn pier was a tall, gaunt man, who walked with a slight limp.

He was alone, and though he nodded pleasantly to one or two of his fellow pa.s.sengers, he walked by himself, and all details of landing being over, he took a taxicab to a hotel restaurant, glad to eat a luncheon more to his taste than the s.h.i.+p's fare had been.

He bought several New York papers, and soon became so absorbed in their contents that his carefully selected food might have been dust and ashes for all he knew.

Staring at an advertis.e.m.e.nt, he called a waiter.

”Send out and get me that book,” he said, ”as quick as you can.”

”Yes, sir,” returned the man, ”it's right here, sir, on the news-stand.

Get it in a minute, sir.”

And in about a minute Peter Boots sat, almost unable to believe his own eyes, as he scanned the chapter headings of his father's book, detailing the death and the subsequent experiences of him who sat and stared at the pages.

He looked at the frontispiece, a portrait of himself, but bearing little resemblance to his present appearance. For, where the pictured face showed a firm, well-molded chin, the living man wore a brown beard, trimmed Vand.y.k.e fas.h.i.+on, and where the expression on the portrait showed a merry, carefree smile, the real face was graven with deep lines that told of severe experiences of some sort.

But the real face grinned a little at the picture, and broke into a wider smile at some sentences read at random as the pages were hastily turned, and then as further developments appeared, the blue eyes showed a look of puzzled wonder, quickly followed by horror and despair.

Peter closed the book and laid it aside, and finished his luncheon in a daze.

One thing stood forth in his mind. He must take time to think--think deeply, carefully, before he did anything. He must get away by himself and meet this strange, new emergency that had come to him.

What to do, how to conduct himself, these were questions of gravest import, and not to be lightly settled.

He thought quickly, and concluded that for a secure hiding-place a man could do no better than choose a big city hotel.

Finis.h.i.+ng his meal he went to the desk and asked for a room, registering as John Harrison, which was the name by which he had been known on the s.h.i.+p that had brought him to port.

Once behind the locked door of his room he threw himself into an armchair and devoured the book he had bought.

Rapidly he flew through it; then went over it again, more slowly, until Peter Boots was familiar with every chapter of the book that his father had written in his memory.

Memory! And he wasn't dead!

The book, he saw, had gone through a large number of editions, wherefore, many people had read the tale of his tragic fate in the Labrador wild, and of his recrudescence and communications with his parents, and now, here he was reading it himself.

It is not easy to realize how strange it must seem to read not only one's own death notices but the accounts of one's return to earth in spirit form, and to be informed of the astonis.h.i.+ng things one said and did through the kind offices of a professional medium!

A medium! Madame Parlato! And she ”got in touch” with him! She succeeded in getting messages from him--and materializations!

Peter's chicory blue eyes nearly popped out of his head when he read of the ”materialization” of his tobacco pouch.