His imagination had him by the forelock once more, but
this time he was resisting with all his might. It meant resistance to
the strongest attribute that he possessed. The man's mind was now a
picture-gallery and now a stage. He thought in pictures and he saw in
scenes. It was no fault of Langholm's, any more than it was a merit.
Imagination was the predominant force of his intellect, as in others is
the power of reasoning, or the gift of languages, or the mastery of
figures. Langholm could no more help it than he could change the color
of his eyes, but to-night he did his best. He had mistaken invention for
discovery once already. He was grimly determined not to let it happen
twice.
To suspect Steel because he chanced to have been in the neighborhood of
Chelsea on the night of the murder, and absent from his hotel about the
hour of its committal, was not less absurd than his first suspicion of
the man who could be proved to have been lying between life and death at
the time. There had been something to connect the dead man with
Severino. There was nothing within Langholm's knowledge to connect him
with Steel. Yet Steel was the most mysterious person that he had ever
met with outside the pages of his own novels.
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