The Man Who Met Himself
By Donovan Bayley
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MR. RICHARD PANTON, missing his wife more and more, poured out another, and, this time, really final glass of whisky, dispatched it to join its fellows, lit his candle, extinguished the sitting-room gas, saw that all the doors and windows were bolted, barred, and fastened, and went halfway upstairs toward bed.
His intention, of course, was to go the whole way; but this was not carried out, for one of his feet caught in the stair carpeting, or possibly in a loose stair rod, so that, holding tightly to the candlestick, he returned, mostly through the air, to the foot of the stairs, and, being arrived there, further downward motion was arrested by the impact of the back of his cranium upon the tiled hall.
As a result of that violent resolution of forces, he sustained a certain degree of concussion of the brain, and lay insensible, with the candle still upright, and, rather strangely, still burning. Mr. Panton thinks that it did not go out, and it is quite possible that it did not.
Panton came to at last with a jerk, and sat up, while the stairs and the hall door produced the time-worn illusion of going round when they really were not. He refused to believe them; they presently quieted down, and then he saw something else that he would have refused to believe had he been able, but he could not do anything but believe, in spite of the locked doors and the fastened windows.
Standing halfway up the stairs, looking meditatively at him, very gravely, was a perfectly naked man, who, though he had never seen him before, seemed inexplicably familiar to him. He sat staring at him, his hands palm down on the tiles, the candle on his lap, unable to say anything, so much did he wonder.
The other man, however, had evidently no such disability, for he spoke serenely, his eye on Mr. Panton.
“What an odd creature!” he said. “I wonder why he was chosen for me?”
“You!” said Panton. “You! Who are you?”
“Oh, don’t you know? To a very great extent I’m —you; in fact, I’m all that’s really essential of you.”
“When did you escape?” Panton asked caustically.
“Tt was less an escape than an ejectment. It happened when you drank rather too much and fell downstairs.”
“What on earth do you mean?”
“I don’t; it’s hardly an earthly matter. It involves a thing that the part of me you are doesn’t understand, the inner psychology.”
“Say it again, slowly.”
“No; it wouldn’t be any use. I never have done things that are of no use; that isn’t what I’m for.”
“You seem very mad.”
“Reduced to the basic fact, that means you don’t understand me. Of course, now I’m outside you, you don’t possess the means of understanding me, because no one can understand his subliminal self.”
“His what?”
“I'll try to put it simply. Do you remember that you've often been puzzled about something, puzzled to distraction, and then given it up and said, ‘I'll sleep on it?”
“Yes, I've done that.”
“And the puzzle’s been answered in the morning?”
“Quite true.”
“Well, I’m that.”
“That? What?”
“The intelligence which settled your problem for you while you slept. I never sleep, you know, but I'm often very glad when you do, for then you don’t distract me with your futilities.”
“Here, I say!”
“What do you say?”
“Oh, hang it!”
“Hang what?”
“I don’t know.”
“That is like you,” said Mr. Panton’s subliminal self. “You say things that mean nothing, just because you like the sound of them. Do you know how you've always seemed to me?”
“No,”
“I'll tell you, now I’ve the chance. You're a spuffling absurdity. You've made me feel I was locked up inside a bumble bee. You buzz, and you get emotional ; you're in and out of paddies, and there is noth-
