The shadowy, dark head, like mine, seemed to nod imperceptibly above the
ghostly grey of my sleeping-suit. It was, in the night, as though I had
been faced by my own reflection in the depths of a sombre and immense
mirror.
“A pretty thing to have to own up to for a Conway boy,” murmured my
double, distinctly.
“You’re a Conway boy?”
“I am,” he said, as if startled. Then, slowly . . . “Perhaps you too—”
It was so; but being a couple of years older I had left before he joined.
After a quick interchange of dates a silence fell; and I thought suddenly
of my absurd mate with his terrific whiskers and the “Bless my soul—you
don’t say so” type of intellect. My double gave me an inkling of his
thoughts by saying:
“My father’s a parson in Norfolk. Do you see me before a judge and jury
on that charge? For myself I can’t see the necessity. There are fellows
that an angel from heaven—And I am not that. He was one of those
creatures that are just simmering all the time with a silly sort of
wickedness. Miserable devils that have no business to live at all. He
wouldn’t do his duty and wouldn’t let anybody else do theirs. But what’s
the good of talking! You know well enough the sort of ill-conditioned
snarling cur—”
He appealed to me as if our experiences had been as identical as our
clothes. And I knew well enough the pestiferous danger of such a
character where there are no means of legal repression. And I knew well
enough also that my double there was no homicidal ruffian. I did not
think of asking him for details, and he told me the story roughly in
brusque, disconnected sentences. I needed no more. I saw it all going
on as though I were myself inside that other sleeping-suit.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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