“Oh, good Lord,” he groaned, “what has come over me that I can’t remember? I know I’ve missed something--something that will drive me crazy if I can’t find out what it is. Let me think: there was the Rowland excursion to arrange--that’s done; and the holding of Number Seven for the Western mail--I did that, too.” He went on through the day’s routine, checking off the items one by one. “No, it’s something else, and it’s gone from me--gone as though it never were. And whatever it is, it will ruin me, world without end. God of mercy, why can’t I remember?” He leaned back in the swing chair and tortured his brain once again--cudgelled it until the sweat stood in great drops on his forehead, but all to no purpose. Once he started up with the thought that he would try to find Bertram, but he knew not where to look for the stenographer, and, besides, the nameless terror seemed now to be so close at hand as to forbid all expedients asking for time. This menacing phase of the unexplainable thing made him sick with fear, and the sickness made him sit down and sweat again and fight desperately for consciousness. In the midst of this, while he sat staring blankly at the opposite wall, the end came. Having dwelt overmuch upon the day’s routine, the events of it now began to chase each other in a round of endless repetition. In this rhythmic round things tangible were presently involved, first the walls of the room, then the furniture. He caught at the arms of his chair to save himself from slipping into the vortex of the spinning whirlpool: something clicked, in his brain or out of it, the twirling maelstrom vanished in a puff of darkness that could be felt, and silence as profound as that in which the deaf live seemed to kill the sense of hearing. How long he sat horror-sick in the stifling darkness he knew not; it might have been minutes or hours. Then a familiar sound broke the stillness, and he listened with the keen joy of one who hears the babble of running water in a thirsty desert. It was the clicking of the telegraph instrument on his desk, and the tiny tapping was his first assurance that he had not been stricken both deaf and blind in the same instant. At first the clicking spatter of dots and dashes was meaningless; then it slipped into coherence, and Antrim listened with his heart pounding like a trip hammer. The sounder was repeating the wire business of the day. Like a flash out of the unseen it came to the prisoner of despair that the thing forgotten had to do with some telegram mislaid or overlooked, and here was his opportunity. Sooner or later the tapping sounder would give him the lost clew, and he would lie in wait and listen and pounce upon it.