But certainly nothing of the sort could have happened. It was delusion.
That night was particularly bad, but curiously not as bad as some other nights had been.
Jimmy had a normal man's horror of insanity, yet this wasn't, so to speak, normal insanity.
A lunatic has always an explanation for his delusions. Jimmy had none.
He noted the fact.
Next morning he bought a small camera with a flash-bulb attachment and carefully memorized the directions for its use.
This was the thing that would tell the story.
And that night, when he got home, as usual after dark, he had the camera ready.
He unlocked the door and opened it. He put his hand out tentatively. The door was still closed.
He stepped back and quickly snapped the camera.
There was a sharp flash of the bulb. The glare blinded him.
But when he put out his hand again, the door was open.
He stepped into the living-room without having to unlock and open it a second time.
He looked at the desk as he turned the film and put in a new flash-bulb.
It was as empty as he'd left it in the morning.
He hung up his coat and settled down tensely with his pipe.
Presently he knocked out the ashes. There were cigaret butts in the tray.
He quivered a little.
He smoked again, carefully not looking at the desk.
It was not until he knocked out the second pipeful of ashes that he let himself look where Jane's diary had been.
It was there again. The book was open.
There was a ruler laid across it to keep it open.
Jimmy wasn't frightened, and he wasn't hopeful. There was absolutely no reason why this should happen to him.
He was simply desperate and grim when he went across the room.
He saw yesterday's entry, and his own hysterical message.
And there was more writing beyond that.
In Jane's hand.
"Darling, maybe I'm going crazy.
But I think you wrote me as if you were alive.
Maybe I'm crazy to answer you.
But please, darling, if you are alive somewhere and somehow—"
There was a tear-blot here.
The rest was frightened, and tender, and as desperate as Jimmy's own sensations.
He wrote, with trembling fingers, before he put the camera into position and pressed the shutter-control for the second time.
When his eyes recovered from the flash, there was nothing on the desk.
He did not sleep at all that night, nor did he work the next day.
He went to a photographer with the film and paid an extravagant fee to have the film developed and enlarged at once.
He got back two prints, quite distinct.
Even very clear, considering everything.
One looked like a trick shot, showing a door twice, once open and once closed, in the same photograph.
The other was a picture of an open book and he could read every word on its pages.
It was inconceivable that such a picture should have come out.
He walked around practically at random for a couple of hours, looking at the pictures from time to time.
Pictures or no pictures, the thing was nonsense. The facts were preposterous.
It must be that he only imagined seeing these prints.
But there was a quick way to find out.
He went to Haynes.
Haynes was his friend and reluctantly a lawyer—reluctantly because law practice interfered with a large number of unlikely hobbies.
"Haynes," said Jimmy quietly,
"I want you to look at a couple of pictures and see if you see what I do.