Perkins, the Fakeer

"What do you suppose has become of them, my dear? Gwendolen! Horatio! Where are you?"

Ah, but the pathos of it all! Gwendolen! Horatio! Where are you? Were you wilfully, heartlessly selfish, indifferent, in your strange ecstasy, to the sorrow that you brought to others, or were you powerless in the grasp of fate, forced through psychical affinity to disappear thus weirdly from the sight of men?

You must see, dear reader, that what I have written cannot come to an end that will satisfy either your mind or your heart. I began with an exclamation point; I must conclude with an interrogation mark. And in that obligation I find that my tale resembles every human life. We come to earth with a cry, and we leave it with a question. So far as man is concerned, evolution has been merely a zigzag progress up from protoplasm to a problem.

And how has Tom withstood the unmaterialistic revelation that I have been forced to make to him and to the public? Has he been shaken in his faith in the teachings of Büchner, Haeckel and Herr Plätner? Of course, being a man, he is slow to admit that his nursery has vouchsafed to him more enlightenment than his library, but he has grown very gentle and sympathetic when I talk to him about the possibility that the dreams of the brooding East may be nearer the ultimate truth than the syllogisms of the practical West. You see, it was a condition, not a theory, which confronted Tom that morning in our empty nursery.

Nevertheless, he tells me that he has just hired a young detective, who is said to have a genius for solving mysteries that his older colleagues have abandoned as beyond their skill. Let me assure you, dear reader, that if Tom's latest employee gets on the track of Gwendolen Van Voorhees and little Horatio Minturn, I shall see to it that the public be instantly informed of the fact.