Never in my life had I smoked a cigar with a fragrance so exquisite. Not only exquisite, but overpowering. It beguiled my senses, and had such an effect upon me that the last twenty or thirty words uttered by Devlin seemed to be spoken at a great distance from me. This sense of distance affected not only his voice, but himself and all surrounding things. He and they seemed to recede into space, as it were, not bounded by the walls of the small apartment in which we were sitting. I had a dim desire to continue the conversation, and to press Devlin to be more explicit, but it died away. Everything floated in a mist around me, and in this state I fell asleep. CHAPTER XXIII. I PASS A MORNING IN DEVLIN'S PLACE OF BUSINESS. Devlin was up and dressed when I awoke in the morning. I had not to go through the trouble of putting on my clothes, as I had not taken them off on the previous night. It would not have surprised me to find that I had unconsciously sought repose in the usual way, or that I had risen in my sleep to undress; nothing, indeed, would very much have surprised me, so strange had been my dreaming fancies. Naturally they all turned upon Devlin and the case upon which I was engaged. I could easily write a chapter upon them, but I will content myself with briefly describing one of the strangest of them all. I was sitting in a chair, opposite a mirror, in which I saw everything that was passing in the room. Devlin was standing over me, dressing my hair. Suddenly I saw a sharp surgical instrument in his hand. "That is not a razor," I said, "and I don't want to be shaved." "My dear sir," remarked Devlin, with excessive politeness, "what you want or what you don't want matters little." With that he made a straight cut across the top of my head, and laid bare my brains. I saw them and every little cell in them quite distinctly.