“If you don’t mind sitting down a bit,” Grey went on, as he staggered under the news of his own demise, “I’ll try to explain. I’m Carey Grey, just the same--_the_ Carey Grey, of the Knickerbocker and the Union, and I’m not dead.”
Frothingham recognised his voice now, and mystification routed suspicion from the field. He took a chair and Grey sat down, too, with the marble-topped table between them.
“First and foremost,” Grey began, “tell me what day of the month it is.”
Frothingham fancied the man had gone mad.
“The whole thing is most extraordinary,” Grey went on, and then he proceeded to relate his afternoon’s experience, while his listener preserved an interested but incredulous silence.
“Can’t remember a blessed thing,” the narrator concluded, “since that morning last winter--I suppose it was last winter. What year is this?”
“Yes, it was last winter, then--January, if I’m not mistaken.”
Frothingham looked thoughtful and counted back. He wondered whether it was insanity or drugs, or--cunning.
“You must have heard something of it,” Grey went on, eagerly. “Did the newspapers say I was dead?”
“I think that was the ultimate conclusion.”
“Oh, yes, they searched. They followed up every clue. There were columns in the papers for days--yes, for weeks.”
“I can’t understand it,” he said, with something of distress in his voice; “I never thought my head was weak. To be sure, I’d been under rather a strain, with the market in the unsettled condition it was, but my memory was always clear enough. Why, I could give you the closing price and highest and lowest of about every active stock on the list, day after day, without an error of an eighth. By the way, do you know how things have been going in the Street? What’s New York Central now--and St. Paul?”
“Really, I have lost track, Grey,” replied Frothingham indifferently.
“I must get a Paris _Herald_,” the man who had been out of the world for five months continued; “I’m the modern Rip Van Winkle. Thousands of things have happened--must have happened, and I’m in blank ignorance. I just cabled to New York--to Mallory, my partner, and----”
“You what!” exclaimed Frothingham, in amazement.
“Cabled to Mallory. You know him--Dick Mallory, my partner. He’ll be surprised to hear I’m alive, I suppose.”