Moodily he made his way back to his hotel. In a corner of the Palm Room he saw Myrtle Banks deep in conversation with Franklyn, but all desire to give her a clout on the side of the head had now left him. With his chin sunk on his breast, he entered the elevator and was carried up to his room.
Here as rapidly as his quivering fingers would permit, he undressed; and, climbing into the bed as it came round for the second time, lay for a space with wide-open eyes. He had been too shaken to switch his light off, and the rays of the lamp shone on the handsome ceiling which undulated above him. He gave himself up to thought once more.
No doubt, he felt, thinking it over now, his mother had had some very urgent reason for withholding him from alcoholic drink. She must have known of some family secret, sedulously guarded from his infant ears—some dark tale of a fatal Mulliner taint. “William must never learn of this!” she had probably said when they told her the old legend of how every Mulliner for centuries back had died a maniac, victim at last to the fatal fluid. And tonight, despite her gentle care, he had found out for himself.
He saw now that this derangement of his eyesight was only the first step in the gradual dissolution which was the Mulliner Curse. Soon his sense of hearing would go, then his sense of touch.
He sat up in bed. It seemed to him that, as he gazed at the ceiling, a considerable section of it had parted from the parent body and fallen with a crash to the floor.
William Mulliner stared dumbly. He knew, of course, that it was an illusion. But what a perfect illusion! If he had not had the special knowledge which he possessed, he would have stated without fear of contradiction that there was a gap six feet wide above him and a mass of dust and plaster on the carpet below.
And even as his eyes deceived him, so did his ears. He seemed to be conscious of a babel of screams and shouts. The corridor, he could have sworn, was full of flying feet. The world appeared to be all bangs and crashes and thuds. A cold fear gripped at William’s heart. His sense of hearing was playing tricks with him already.
His whole being recoiled from making the final experiment, but he forced himself out of bed. He reached a finger towards the nearest heap of plaster and drew it back with a groan. Yes, it was as he feared, his sense of touch had gone wrong too. That heap of plaster, though purely a figment of his disordered brain, had felt solid.
So there it was. One little moderately festive evening at Mike’s Place, and the Curse of the Mulliners had got him. Within an hour of absorbing the first drink of his life, it had deprived him of his sight, his hearing, and his sense of touch. Quick service, felt William Mulliner.
As he climbed back into bed, it appeared to him that two of the walls fell out. He shut his eyes, and presently sleep, which has been well called Tired Nature’s Sweet Restorer, brought oblivion. His last waking thought was that he imagined he had heard another wall go.
William Mulliner was a sound sleeper, and it was many hours before consciousness returned to him. When he awoke, he looked about him in astonishment. The haunting horror of the night had passed; and now, though conscious of a rather severe headache, he knew that he was seeing things as they were.
And yet it seemed odd to think that what he beheld was not the remains of some nightmare. Not only was the world slightly yellow and a bit blurred about the edges, but it had changed in its very essentials overnight. Where eight hours before there had been a wall, only an open space appeared, with bright sunlight streaming through it. The ceiling was on the floor, and almost the only thing remaining of what had been an expensive bedroom in a first-class hotel was the bed. Very strange, he thought, and very irregular.
A voice broke in upon his meditations.
“Why, Mr. Mulliner!”
William turned, and being, like all the Mulliners, the soul of modesty, dived abruptly beneath the bedclothes. For the voice was the voice of Myrtle Banks. And she was in his room!
“Mr. Mulliner!”
William poked his head out cautiously. And then he perceived that the proprieties had not been outraged as he had imagined. Miss Banks was not in his room, but in the corridor. The intervening wall had disappeared. Shaken, but relieved, he sat up in bed, the sheet drawn round his shoulders.
“You don’t mean to say you’re still in bed?” gasped the girl.
“Why, is it awfully late?” said William.
“Did you actually stay up here all through it?”
“Through what?”
“The earthquake.”
“What earthquake?”
“The earthquake last night.”
“Oh, that earthquake?” said William, carelessly. “I did notice some sort of an earthquake. I remember seeing the ceiling come down and saying to myself, ‘I shouldn’t wonder if that wasn’t an earthquake.’ And then the walls fell out, and I said, ‘Yes, I believe it is an earthquake.’ And then I turned over and went to sleep.”
Myrtle Banks was staring at him with eyes that reminded him partly of twin stars and partly of a snail’s.
“You must be the bravest man in the world!”
William gave a curt laugh.
“Oh, well,” he said, “I may not spend my whole life persecuting unfortunate sharks with pocketknives, but I find I generally manage to keep my head fairly well in a crisis. We Mulliners are like that. We do not say much, but we have the right stuff in us.”
He clutched his head. A sharp spasm had reminded him how much of the right stuff he had in him at that moment.
“My hero!” breathed the girl,
