"I would give a great deal to have ten minutes with Goldstein himself, and know exactly what did happen and why Jakey was fired. I gathered that it was something pretty unpleasant. But Goldstein is somewhere out in Ohio, and try as I would, I could get nothing more from the brother than what I have told you. I think myself there was something hushed up at the time, and that he is afraid even now of its coming out. But I got enough I think to throw some interesting light on what has happened since." "Did you get any idea," Lennox asked, "of Jakey's make-up when he was with these people?" "No. Why?" "Tell him your story, Lennox," I said. He repeated briefly what he had already told me. Herrick listened, his face intent. "So that was----" He pulled himself up short. "Well, it isn't difficult to put two and two together. The obvious explanation is that Jakey has fallen back on his old circus stunt as a means of terrorizing the neighbourhood. It wouldn't be difficult. No one here, from what I can make out--possibly not even his own family--knew how he spent those two years while he was away. There is a form of mania which takes just that expression, and it is possible that in Jakey's case it began out of sheer maliciousness, and developed later into something a great deal worse--a fixed mania which, with the rousing of the homicidal instinct, turned him actually, at moments, into the wild beast he pretended to be." "You think it was Menning--it was--well, what I saw--that attacked Lessing?" "I am certain of it. Go over the thing carefully, Lennox. There was no stunt outside the possibility of a man with unusual physical strength and ability, who had had acrobatic training in boyhood. And remember that a maniac can perform feats that in his sane moments might be outside his powers. We are not dealing with a normal person. That's the one thing in this whole business we've got to remember." He rose. "Austin, will you come over to the bungalow with me? I'd like to see Lessing tonight." I looked at my watch. "Ten o'clock. I told them I'd be over. We'll take the cycle. It'll carry two of us." He had left the motor cycle outside the porch. As we wheeled it out to the roadway I said: "You think that is the explanation of the whole thing?" Herrick gave me a quick look. "I said it was the obvious explanation. It is. But there's more mixed up with it than that. And it's the other side of it that we shall never get to the truth of until we get hold of Menning himself." I thought of Lennox's description of what he had seen, in that fleeting glimpse, and in spite of myself a shudder went over me. "Do you mean that mania can actually transform a human being to that degree?" "Haven't you see enough, Austin, in your own experience, to answer that question?"