Defoe could brook it no longer. He wrenched around in bed to grapple with his antagonist, forgetful, in his madness, of the automatic. But before he could free himself from the bedclothes the lamp was snapped out, and Defoe was left ignominiously tumbled in the darkness on the floor.
A chuckle from the vicinity of the bedroom door told him of his guest's departure. . . .
When morning came, after the nerve-racking night, Defoe found it hard to realize that his two experiences with the Voice really had taken place. None the less, he knew they were preying on his vitality, on his brain-functions.
Repeatedly the thought came to him that it was all a dream like his recollection of the murder trial out of which he had awakened the night of the Voice’s first visit. But always against the theory of the dream he placed his remembrance of the feel of the automatic revolver; and, too, the fact that he had talked with Manuel and with the Voice at the same time argued against the dream explanation.
Left, then, was conscience—that is, if the visits of the Voice were simply hallucinations of a distracted mind. But why should conscience wait for twelve years to haunt and harass him?
The more he pondered it all, the greater became the dread of another visit from the Voice. The greater grew his fear, too, of losing his reason, as he sought to analyze the situation from every conceivable standpoint. With every new bit of theorizing, Defoe felt himself giving way more and more to melancholia such as he knew is frequently but the press to insanity. Was it possible, he wondered, for a man’s conscience to drive him to imbecility?
Defoe finally accepted the inevitable.
“Manuel.” he ordered, the second morning after the bedroom encounter with the Voice, "pack my thing. We're going away.”
“Away, senor? Where?”
Defoe’s brain groped vainly for an instant, then seized upon the only chance.
“The sea—a sea voyage. My nerves. . . .”
Manuel busied himself among Defoe’s clothes. “Do you need many things, senor? Do you go far away—Europe, perhaps?”
“No. no. Just dawn the coast—Old Point Comfort, I guess. Yes. that’s it. A week or so of rest. Just my steamer trunk and a suitcase will do.”
The day of the trip down the coast was as perfect as he could have wanted for his own satisfaction. All during the forenoon the Old Dominion steamer skirted the Jersey shore line, and Defoe sat out on deck basking in the sun and already feeling better for the salt-laden air that he breathed in deeply. In the afternoon he napped most of the time and when nightfall chilled the deck promenaders he descended with the rest to the dining-saloon.
It was while sitting in the smoking-saloon, after dinner, that Defoe first had the impression that he was being watched. A poker game was going on, lackadaisically, in one corner of the saloon; scattered in chairs and cushioned seats along the windows were perhaps a dozen or fifteen men. But, for the life of him, Defoe could not pick out any one in the room who might be watching him. now he gave his fleeting impression indulgence long enough to look about him.
Finishing a cigar, Defoe decided on a deck stroll before retiring. It was too cold and damp, with a fog beginning to gather, to permit of sitting on deck, so he paced to and fro briskly up near the fore deck beneath the pilot’s tower. The nervousness of the few moments in the smoking-saloon, when he imagined himself being watched, transmuted itself into a shiver as the foggy dampness penetrated to his marrow. He lit a fresh cigar and puffed at it jerkily as if to generate bodily warmth. Presently the shiver developed into a veritable shudder such as precedes chills or certain forms of ague.
Defoe, thoroughly miserable and alarmed now at the fear of sickness on board ship, chafed his cheeks with his hands and, on his way to the entrance
