"Sir!" I exclaimed. "Explain yourself."
"I've got drunk—and I've knocked my old woman round a bit; but I never ran away with any other woman. I'm pretty rotten, all right, all right—but compared to you I'm a lily-white angel."
The contempt in the man's voice was so cutting that I quite naturally became enraged.
"What do you mean, you dirty, lazy wife-beater," I demanded.
"Better ask Colonel Saunders," he leered. "He's waiting for you with a strong, new, black snake whip."
I was so shaken with anger that the electrons composing my body seemed to lose all sense of relationship. For a time I knew not how long—I was as if I were not. When I once more realized that I was I, there were many thousands of miles of atmosphere between Jack Walsh and me. And suddenly I remembered I had neither told my enemy where his body was to be found, nor ascertained the resting place of my own.
CHAPTER SEVEN
THE problem that now confronted me was "How am I to find my own body and take possession before Jack Walsh discovers that his body is to be hung?"
I didn't know which way to turn, but finally decided to be guided by my great longing to see Angeline. I would go to the old home, first. She must have returned by this time. I could not believe she would want to remain away when she had taken time to remember how good I'd always been to her.
The house was dark, empty, silent as on my last visit. Not one little clue could I find to the last resting place of my beloved body.
I went to the home of my wife's parents. Angeline lay on the bed where I had last seen her. She seemed to be sleeping, but there were traces of tears on her cheek. In her hand was a copy of the evening paper. I glanced at the words which she had evidently been reading, when she fell asleep.
"SCANDAL IN HIGH LIFE!"
Those were the words I saw, in the most insolent of bold-faced type. I read the article through to the end. It told how I, Joseph Scranton, had cruelly beaten my wife, Angeline, with my bootjack in the presence of witnesses, and how she had taken the advice of her family and friends and instituted proceedings for a divorce. It hinted that I had long been addicted to the use of drugs, but had been very successful in disguising the fact, and ended by promising its readers that if they would visit the court house at a certain hour of a certain day they would be regaled with other bits of juicy news concerning the Scranton family, and a certain other family, well known in social circles.
I do not attempt to quote, but simply give a synopsis of an article that, without doubt, made me the maddest astral in the universe.
I could gain nothing by staying where I was, so I decided to go to Helen's house. Perhaps I might learn something there about myself. If I could only have known how long a time had elapsed since my body had been vacated, I might not have been so worried. It was terrible to think that the earthly me might even now be dying.
Yet why should I want to live when Angeline was going to get a divorce? What would life be worth, if it must be lived without her? I had never believed in divorces, and now I was more than ever against a country where the laws made them possible. Why could not Angeline have had more faith in me? So far as she could know, she had had no cause to doubt me. Why should not her love for me have told her that I could not strike her, and be myself?
Of course, if she could have known of my atmospherical journeys with Helen, that would, undoubtedly, have caused her to lose faith in me, but how could she know of them? Even if she were told, her limited knowledge of occult laws would have moved her to say that it was not possible. I did not want Angeline to obtain a divorce. I believed that if I could get possession of my body, send for her, let her see that I was my own lovable self, I could easily win her back again, and all would be well with us, forever after.
My first glance at Helen, on reaching her room, told me that she had again astralized herself. I turned to leave the room and caught sight of a card which she had put in a conspicuous place beside the clock on her dressing table. It contained the words, "Beside the little lake in Italy."
Like a flash these words illumined my mind. Helen had guessed that a strange astral had possession of my body. She believed that, in my consequent unhappiness, I might visit her, and she had written these words, hoping that I might see them, and join her on the shore of the beautiful lake which our astral bodies had once visited.
In a remarkably short space of time—as time is usually measured—I was on my way to Italy, I had found Helen, and we were exchanging confidences.
"That is what I thought," she said, when I had told her of Jack Walsh. "The whisky and tobacco on your library table first aroused my suspicions."
"Did you explain to Angeline?"
"Explain to Angeline! Humph! Wait until you've tried it."
"You have tried to explain?"
"I have." Her tone was ominous.
"She couldn't understand?"
"She didn't try. Neither will anyone else. But I'm not worrying about you. I've troubles of my own. What do you suppose is in store for me?"
"Nothing very bad, I hope."
"My husband has seen a physician about me. There has been a consultation. It has been decided that my brain is inflamed by pressure and that I'm a fit subject for trepanning—"
"Trepanning! You can't mean trepanning."
"That is exactly what I mean. That's what I have to thank you for. I ought to be in my body this instant. If they find it unconscious—why, it may be on the operating table now—this very moment!"
"Yet you took the chance of leaving it, just to meet me—"
"Not because I wanted to, believe me. If only I never had seen you—"
"Similar thoughts visit me about four times a minute," I interrupted, politely sarcastic.
"I had to see you," continued Helen, "to let you know that it's up to you to get me out of this frightful mess."
"Up to me!"
"Certainly. You got me into it."
"Dragged you in, I suppose," I breathed, icily.
"You've got to go back to your own body—at once," commanded Helen—
"You don't mean it!" I sneered.
"Then you've got to convince those doctors, and my poor, dear husband—"
"Who carries a black snake whip—"
"Coward! Suppose he does use it on you! Is that anything to compare with my suffering!"
"Nothing at all. I'm having a blissful time."
"Joe, please go back to your body. I'll try to restrain my husband."
"So good of you! Will you kindly tell me where I can find my body?"
"In the work house. Didn't you know?"
"Work house! My body in the work house!"
"Sent up for ninety days; drunkenness."
Work house! Ninety days. My body. Oh, if I only had Jack Walsh by the scruff of the neck for one sweet minute—but why snort fire and brim-
