How long he ran, or in what direction, he never knew. He had a dim memory of himself, sitting in some place with a bottle of whiskey before him. The liquor seemed to make no impression on his brain; his hand still shook with the paralysis of fear. He remembered his efforts to pour whiskey into the glass without spilling it. After a time a face, vaguely familiar, entered his nightmare, and the man, who carried a little black bag such as doctors use, sat down beside him and shouted at him:-- "What are you doing here? What do you want with that whiskey? Give it to me. You have had all the booze that's good for you, I guess." And in his stupor he said to the man tearfully:-- "Don't take it away, doctor. For heaven's sake don't take the whiskey away! I tell you, I have killed people to-night. Eight, ten, forty--no, I killed eight people. Yes, eight men and women. I see 'em dying now. Give me the whiskey!" "You're off your nut, man," the doctor replied impatiently. "You haven't killed any one. You have been boozing, and you'll kill yourself if you don't quit. Here, give me that!" He remembered rising to his feet obediently and saying very solemnly:-- "Very well, my friend, I won't drink any more if you say so. But listen to me. I killed a lot of people, eight of 'em, and I don't know how many more besides--over there in a great fire. I saw 'em dying, like flies, like flies! Now give me one more drink." "All right, you killed 'em, if you say so." "Don't leave me, doctor! It's a terrible thing to kill so many people, all at once, like flies, like flies!" And he burst into tears, sobbing and shaking with the awful visions of his brain, his head buried in his arms. CHAPTER XXVI The next morning Hart found himself on a sofa in a bare, dusky room that looked as if it was a doctor's office. He sat up and tried to think what had happened to him overnight. Suddenly the picture of the burning hotel swept across his memory, and he groaned with a fresh sense of sharp pain. Some one was whistling in the next room, and presently the door opened, and Dr. Coburn appeared in trousers and undershirt, mopping his face with a towel. The architect recognized him now, and knew that he was the one who had struggled with him in his dreams. "Hello, Jack Hart!" the doctor called out boisterously. "How are you feeling? Kind of dopey? My, but you were full of booze last night! I had to jam a hypodermic into you to keep you quiet, when I got you over here. Do you get that way often?" "Was I drunk?" the architect asked dully. "Well, I rather think. Don't you feel it this morning?" He grinned at the dishevelled figure on the sofa and continued to mop his face. "You were talking dotty, too, about killing folks. I thought maybe you might have a gun on you. But I couldn't find anything. What have you been doing?" "It was the fire," Hart answered slowly, "a terrible fire. People were killed--I saw them. My God! it was awful!"