...

So am I crazy? Am I hallucinating? Did they put something in my beer perhaps? Dirty trick! Nonsense, after all it's a decent bar like a thousand others, not some clip joint where they put a mickey into flush customers; drinks to roll them later! Just look at father Bolcke -- the picture of an upright publican! So then -- what's with this hoodoo about doppelgangers and such?

"I am not you," my mirror-image said as if out of an illusionist's smoke, "and you are not me -- it's just this damned resemblance we have. Frankly, it's really striking. I happen to know you a bit longer than you me and, just like you, I thought I'll be a monkey's uncle the first time I saw you . . ."

"Would you also like a beer?" I asked my partner, if only to say something.

"Beer? No!" my second face answered. "But a double gin would suit me very well; I feel a cold coming on -- Mr. John Farnmor, if I'm not mistaken!"

"Yes, that's my name," I replied and reached for the beer at my side. Damn, he even knew my real name, the name I keep secret from all the world, which I'm so intent on keeping incognito, and for good reason . . .

I ordered a triple-decker gin for my so familiar-looking unfamiliar and a double for me.

"My name's Marnix Pentycross, but that is merely by way of introduction. Maybe I'm called something else, I have just as many names and masks as you, but what matter . . ."

We toasted each other, drank, set the glasses down and fell silent awhile. Then Marnix Pentycross said: "Surely you want to know why I've been standing outside your house in this lousy weather, looking at the roof for hours?

So he was looking at the roof. Strange . . . interesting!

"In time, I'll fill you in on all the details, but for now I ask you to remain patient -- the time's not yet ripe."

It was a typical phrase found over and over agin in a special kind of literature -- but he was actually using it, yes, even completing it, for if he had begun to speak a few seconds later, he would not have brought it to a close . . . A simple worker standing some two yards from us, likewise leaning against the counter, let out a muffled cry, pressed hiss right hand against his left upper arm with a pain-wracked expression and threatened to topple forward. All eyes turned his way. Pentycross jumped toward him:

"Let's have a look at your arm, man!" he cried and pushed up the left sleeve of the worker's pullover. "Damn, a blow-dart! Quick, a belt or a sturdy strap; it must be tied off right away!!"

The stupefied publican immediately produced some strong packing string with which Pentycross boud the victim's upper arm in feverish haste.

"For heaven's sake call a doctor," he shouted at father Bolcke, "and make it quick, it's a matter of life and death, your customer's been struck by a poison dart!"

The worker gaped incomprehendingly at his bound arm; the innkeeper stabbed at the telephone dial with his fat fingers. An incredible excitement reigned in the little bar.

"That's not possible! All I hear is blowgun! Has one of the brats pulled a stupid prank? Wild west! Negro kraal! Hottentot sorcery! Just like the movies! That's what you get from reading comics" and so forth, the metaphors vying with one another in force.

"It was intended for us, Farnmor," Marnix Pentycross told me softly, "but it struck this innocent bystander by chance. Miserable shot, that Unspeakable!"

He said the words! So Pentycross too was after this monster . . . I nodded knowingly.