That
was why and how, so far, he had beaten the tricksters.
But while his schemes flashed before his mind, as the opiate suspended
him in the middle heaven between sleep and waking, the tricksters and
manipulators came hurrying after him like marauders that waited for the
moment when they could rush the camp in the watches of the night. His
disordered imagination saw the ruin and wreck of his work, the seizure of
what was his own--the place of control on his railways, the place of the
Master Man who cared infinitely more to see his designs accomplished than
for the profit they would bring to himself. Yesterday he had been just at
the top of the hill. The key in his fingers was turning in the lock which
would make safe the securities of his life and career, when it snapped,
and the world grew dark as the black curtain fell and shut out the
lighted room from the wayfarer in the gloom. Then, it was, came the
opaque blackness which could be felt, and his voice calling in despair:
"Blind! I am blind!"
He did not know that he had taken an opiate, that his friend had
mercifully atrophied his rebellious nerves. These visions he was seeing
were terribly true, but they somehow gave him no physical torture. It was
as though one saw an operation performed upon one's body with the nerves
stilled and deadened by ether.
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