“I am writing under the impulse of a strong excitement, I am unhappy, I am--but let me tell you. I went to Lodz with a song in my brain, for I felt I should achieve the aim of my life. I should be the Master of Masters. Why then am I in this distress? I will tell you. I was matched in the first round with the great Cuban, Primavera. I had the white pieces. I opened as your Professor had opened in that phantom tourney. All went well. I played my tenth move. Primavera settled himself to analyse. I looked around the room. I saw, at first with little interest, a stranger, tall, debonair, enter the big swing door, and come towards my table. And then I remembered your Professor’s tale, and I trembled. The stranger came up behind my opponent’s chair and gave me _just that look_. A moment later Primavera made his move, and I put out my hand and offered that sacrifice, but, my friend, the hand that made that move _was not my own_. Trembling and infinitely distressed, I saw the stranger put his arm over Primavera’s shoulder, take his hand, guide it to a piece, and thereby make that one complete answer to my move. I saw my opponent go white, turn and glance behind him, and then he said, ‘I feel unwell. I resign.’ ‘Monsieur,’ said I, ‘I do not like this game either. Let us consider it a draw.’ And as I put out my hand to shake his, it was my own hand again, and the stranger was not there. “My friend, I rushed from the room back to my hotel, and I hurled those games of supreme genius into the fire. For a time the paper seemed as if it would not burn, and as if the lights went dim: two shadows that were watching from the wall near the door grew vast and filled the room. Then suddenly great flames shot up and roared the chimney high, they blazed it seemed for hours, then as suddenly died, and the fire, I saw, was out. And then I discovered that I had forgotten every move in every one of those games, the recollection of them had passed from me utterly. I felt a sense of infinite relief, I was free again. Pray God, I never play them in my dreams! “Serge.” THE THIRD COACH THE THIRD COACH The only objection I have to the Royal Porwick Golf Club is that the sixth green is only separated by a narrow lane from the Royal Porwick Lunatic Asylum--or rather from its exercise enclosure--the saddest playground I have ever seen. So-called mad people fill me with dread, and yet a certain shamefaced fascination. “There, but for the grace of God, goes Martin Trout”; though why that grace stopped short of these poor lost souls is a curious mystery understood only by reverend gentlemen.