Chapter XIX

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"Then the walls of my bedroom started to recede, till at last I stood holding on to a bed which had shrunk to the size of a doll's cot, in the middle of a room like Trafalgar Square! That window yonder was such a long way off I could scarcely see it, but I could just detect a Chinaman--the owner of the evil yellow face--creeping through it. He was followed by another, who was enormously tall--so tall that, as they came towards me (and it seemed to take them something like half-an-hour to cross this incredible apartment in my dream), the second Chinaman seemed to tower over me like a cypress-tree.

"I looked up to his face--his wicked, hairless face. Mr. Smith, whatever age I live to, I'll never forget that face I saw last night--or did I see it? God knows! The pointed chin, the great dome of a forehead, and the eyes-- heavens above, the huge green eyes!"

He shook like a sick man, and I glanced at Smith significantly. Inspector Weymouth was stroking his mustache, and his mingled expression of incredulity and curiosity was singular to behold.

"The pumping of my blood," continued West, "seemed to be bursting my body; the room kept expanding and contracting. One time the ceiling would be pressing down on my head, and the Chinamen--sometimes I thought there were two of them, sometimes twenty--became dwarfs; the next instant it shot up like the roof of a cathedral.

"`Can I be awake,' I whispered, `or am I dreaming?'

"My whisper went sweeping in windy echoes about the walls, and was lost in the shadowy distances up under the invisible roof.

"`You are dreaming--yes.' It was the Chinaman with the green eyes who was addressing me, and the words that he uttered appeared to occupy an immeasurable time in the utterance. 'But at will I can render the subjective objective.' I don't think I can have dreamed those singular words, gentlemen. "And then he fixed the green eyes upon me--the blazing green eyes. I made no attempt to move. They seemed to be draining me of something vital--bleeding me of every drop of mental power. The whole nightmare room grew green, and I felt that I was being absorbed into its greenness.

"I can see what you think. And even in my delirium-- if it was delirium--I thought the same. Now comes the climax of my experience--my vision--I don't know what to call it. I SAW some WORDS issuing from my own mouth!"

Inspector Weymouth coughed discreetly. Smith whisked round upon him.

"This will be outside your experience, Inspector, I know," he said, "but Mr. Norris West's statement does not surprise me in the least. I know to what the experience was due."

Weymouth stared incredulously, but a dawning perception of the truth was come to me, too.

"How I SAW a SOUND I just won't attempt to explain; I simply tell you I saw it. Somehow I knew I had betrayed myself-- given something away."

"You gave away the secret of the lock combination!" rapped Smith.

"Eh!" grunted Weymouth.