"Look here," I said. "I know you're pretty well done up. I know you're sick and tired of the whole hopeless situation, that you've given up trying to think about it. But I want you to act this thing out for me to-night. I want to try to dramatize that situation down in Lockwood's office when you signed for the Carlton letter. I want you to do everything you can to visualize that moment. I want you to get that cantilever bridge stuck out across the gulf, across the gulf from each side, until you touch the middle and give us a chance to bolt 'em together." I pushed back the chairs, cleared the space on the reading-table, swung the youth about so that he faced this table, and then took one of my own letters from the heavy brass stand beside him. My one object now was to make him "go Berserk." "This is your room," I told him. "And this is your desk. Remember, you're in your office, hard at work. Be so good, please, as to keep busy." I crossed the room to the door as I spoke, intent on my impersonation. But I could hear him as he laughed his indulgent and mirthless laugh. "Now, I'm bringing you this mail matter. And here I have a registered letter addressed to one Carlton. You see it, there? This letter? It's for Carlton, remember. I want you to take it. And sign for it, here. Yes, write down your name--actually write it. Now take the letter. And now think, man, _think_. What do you do after that? What is the next thing? What do you feel is the right thing? The only thing?" He looked up at me, wonderingly. Then he looked about the room. Then he slowly shook his bead from side to side. I had not succeeded in communicating to him any jot of my own mental energy. "I can't do it," he said, "I can't remember. It doesn't seem to suggest a thing." "But think, man, think!" I cried out at him. "Use your imagination! Get into the part! Act it! The thing's there in your head, I tell you. It's shut up somewhere there, only you haven't hit the right combination to throw the door open. You can't do a thing in this life, you've never lived an active moment of this life, without a record of it being left there. It may be buried, it may be buried so deep you'll die without digging it up, but it's there, I tell you, if you only go after it!" "If I was only sure it was there," hesitated the man at the table. "If I only knew just what direction to go! But this doesn't mean anything; it doesn't _get_ me anywhere."