persuasion that Mr Bessel was endeavouring to speak to him, but he would not let himself attend to any such belief.
About dawn, his physical fatigue asserted itself, and he went to bed and slept at last in spite of dreaming. He rose late, unrested and anxious and in considerable facial pain. The morning papers had no news of Mr Bessel's aberration—it had come too late for them. Mr Vincey's perplexities, to which the fever of his bruise added fresh irritation, became at last intolerable, and, after a fruitless visit to the Albany, he went down to St Paul's Churchyard to Mr Hart, Mr Bessel's partner, and so far as Mr Vincey knew, his nearest friend.
He was surprised to learn that Mr Hart, although he knew nothing of the outbreak, had also been disturbed by a vision, the very vision that Mr Vincey had seen—Mr Bessel, white and dishevelled, pleading earnestly by his gestures for help. That was his impression of the import of his signs. 'I was just going to look him up in the Albany when you arrived,' said Mr Hart. 'I was so sure of something being wrong with him.'
As the outcome of their consultation the two gentlemen decided to inquire at Scotland Yard for news of their missing friend. 'He is bound to be laid by the heels,' said Mr Hart. 'He can't go on at that pace for long.' But the police authorities had not laid Mr Bessel by the heels. They confirmed Mr Vincey's overnight experiences and added fresh circumstances, some of an even graver character than those he knew—a list of smashed glass along the upper half of Tottenham Court Road, an attack upon a policeman in Hampstead Road, and an atrocious assault upon a woman. All these outrages were committed between half-past twelve and a quarter to two in the morning, and between those hours—and, indeed, from the very moment of Mr Bessel's first rush from his rooms at half-past nine in
