“It’s queer,” Allis mused; “you and I are the only ones of the crowd who know what happened; and the one thing we are most anxious for is that everyone concerned--even Fenwick himself--should be convinced of some explanation we know is wrong. We want Mrs. Medford to believe Mrs. Conway; I want Maud to believe what I said here a while ago; and I even want Fenwick to believe that the dead communicate. We’re a scientific lot, aren’t we?” “I’m not sure I wouldn’t rather believe any of those things than believe what I do,” I said grimly. I remembered Fenwick’s face. “Exactly. Poor science!” Mrs. Allis returned, and I bade my host and hostess good night. This time I did not go back again. [13] Copyright, 1922, by The Metropolitan Magazine Company. Copyright, 1923, by Katharine Fullerton Gerould. WINKELBURG[14] By BEN HECHT (From _The Smart Set_) I There was never a man as irritating as Winkelburg. He was an encyclopedia of misfortunes. Everything that can happen to a man had happened to him. He had lost his family, his money and his health. He was, in short, a man completely broken--tall, thin, with a cadaverous face out of which shone two huge lustreless eyes. He walked with an angular crawl that reminded one of the emaciated flies one sees at the beginning of winter. That was Winkelburg to a dot--a creature perversely alive, dragging itself across an illimitable expanse of flypaper. It was one of Winkelburg’s worst habits to appear at unexpected moments. But, perhaps, any appearances he might have made would have had this irritating quality of unexpectedness. One was never looking forward to him, and thus the sight of his wan, uncomfortable smile, his lustreless eyes, his tenacious crawl was invariably an irritating surprise. I will be frank. It was Winkelburg’s misfortune which first attracted me. I listened to his story avidly. He talked in slow words and there was intelligence in the man. He was able to perceive himself, not only as a pain-racked, starving human, but he glimpsed with his large, tired eyes his relation to things outside himself. It appeared that the man had been lying in a hall bedroom for two weeks dying. An embittered landlady to whom he owed three months rent had tended him. I fancy she was torn between a hope that the miserable fool would die and give her a chance to rent the room to a more profitable customer and a more optimistic greed. He might recover, get a job and pay her the three months rent he owed. Winkelburg wrote to me about it. It was my first knowledge of the man. He offered his experiences as material for one of the daily stories I was writing for the _News_. His letter was a document. In it he recounted in good English and in a few lines the history of his life.