Page:Weird Tales v15n01 1930-01.djvu/118

"Quite right." I laughed again. "Routine for the American tourist."

"There are many things to see in the park."

"Stately trees."

He waved them away with the hand that held the cigarette. He frowned a little.

"Have you ever heard of second sight?"

"Second sight? Yes, certainly."

"And of Argazila and his fourth dimension? "

"Argazila?" I could not place the name. Argazila? . . . What did this man have to sit beside me for!

"You do not know him? Few do. He was—he is—what is one to say? was, is, will be—they are all so alike out there." He flung his arm upward and outward. "He is a Persian; little known, I daresay, but of whose importance the world shall soon know. Now, he is nothing; only a few, a very few, know."

I said nothing. There was nothing I could have said.

"It is to the fourth dimension that I refer when I say that there is much to see in the park. Everything that was and will be is in the fourth dimension. You see?"

I nodded hopefully, but I certainly did not see.

"It is interesting to go through the park probing the fourth dimension. One can easily see Maria Theresa walking about with Francis as a little boy."

"Yes?" I decided to humor him. One does not often come across so rare a specimen of an intoxicated man. But he really did not act it. His talk, though . . .

"In Paris I saw the French Revolution re-enacted. Let me tell you that the real man behind that catastrophe, the man who sparred on Robespierre, Danton, Marat, and the others, was that famous charlatan known as Count Cagliostro. "

"Yes?" said I again. I really could not think of anything else to say. What would you have said?

"Anyone would have enjoyed seeing Napoleon march through Paris." For a few minutes he was silent.

"Look!" said I, pointing to a brakeman signaling us with a red lantern. "Look at that man's face!" The train was slowly starting to move. "He could be reading a newspaper."

"Yes, he could very well be reading a newspaper. I like the way his mouth turns down at the corners; as if he were reading something unpleasant."

For a moment the brakeman was outlined in the light of a side-tracked train. He looked so small. The stranger again started to speak; he did not appear to have looked at the brakeman, and yet . . .

"You have probably been in Pisa?"

"And have seen the tower? Yes," said I, "I have."

"I saw them building it." The man didn't sound drunk. Perhaps his mind . . .? Sometimes, you know, you do find one or two; perfectly harmless if humored.

"Yes?" I said again. It irritated me that I said it; one would think that I had absolutely no vocabulary. But in such a position . . .

"I watched the succession of the Ptolemies from the death of Alexander the Great to the last of them. You should see Cleopatra. She isn't really so wonderful; I've seen a good many girls—there's one just ahead—that leave Cleopatra in the distance."

I wasn't going to say "yes" again; so I held my peace. So did he. Irritating, he could be. Perhaps if I said it in French?

"Yes?" I said at last. I thought of all the blame that rested on Argazila 's shoulders.

"I saw the building of Rome; the destruction of Carthage. I saw Hannibal, Scipio, Massinissa, Caesar,