reached a point where I was as enthusiastic as he.
"Remember, I have dabbled in philosophy to a certain extent myself. I took a degree at Princeton before I took up the business of crime detection. But my knowledge is elementary compared with that of Lessman. But I am getting away from my subject.
"Under the spell of his eloquence, I forgot that I was the servant and he the master—that I was merely a prisoner, subservient to my jailor's will. For an hour we discussed the subject; I was as interested as he. There is, he claims, no heights to which man can not climb, providing he so wills. To him man is—or should be—absolutely the master of his own body and soul.
"His is a mind that has reached on where others stopped. Hypnotism, to him, is child's play. Soul transference, the exchange of bodies—these are the things that this man dabbles with. But he has his limit. He can go so far and no farther.
"However, with my will submissive to his—with my mind attuned to his—he believed that he could send me hurling through space. In other words, he was to be the power station which would furnish me the energy to make the voyages of exploration.
"I was like wet clay in his hands. With the enthusiasm of a youngster, I gave myself over to him. Leaning back in my chair, at his command I made my mind as nearly as possible an absolute vacuum. It was probably but for an instant—but enough. There was none of the pain that I felt before on that never-to-be-forgotten occasion when my soul was divorced from my body. Instead, I felt my soul—my mental being—leave my body. I stood beside myself sitting there in the chair. There was no fear—nothing except a feeling of buoyancy. . . . ."
CHAPTER X.
I MUST digress from my diary again.
As I have stated elsewhere, I have a recollection of certain things which transpired while I was in Lessman's power, although the greater part of the time that I passed with him is but a blank.
There is nothing in my diary which touches upon my trips into the unknown under his strange influence, aside from an occasional vague mention. I am certain that the greater part of the time I was in a sort of daze, imagining myself in a perfectly normal condition, yet held by The Bodymaster in a state where I would respond immediately to his will.
Yet even now I can recall, vaguely, incidents which happened to me on these trips. I remember meeting Avis on numerous occasions and under many names. Had my adventures happened consecutively, and could I remember them, they would be interesting food for thought for the men of science. But, unfortunately, they jump here and there, the story, oft-times, remaining unfinished.
There are so many, many adventures, the details of which I can not recall, that I will make no attempt to set them down. Suffice to say that all the time my brain was steadily growing weaker while I, poor dupe that I was, imagined that I was again normal.
During my lucid intervals I was constantly troubled by a gnawing conscience. Here was I, an officer of the law, lending myself to the worst form of outlawry. I attempted to reconcile myself with the thought that I was a prisoner, yet I was ever obsessed with the idea that I had proved a traitor to myself and to my oath. My only recompense was the feeling that by becoming a traitor I was saving the life and reason of the woman I loved.
I wonder now why I did not kill Avis and then commit suicide. So
