[The Wrong Box by Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne]@TWC D-Link bookThe Wrong Box CHAPTER X 10/17
I seem to be hungry, for instance; it's probably another hallucination.
Still I might try.
I shall have one more good meal; I shall go to the Cafe Royal, and may possibly be removed from there direct to the asylum.' He wondered with morbid interest, as he descended the stairs, how he would first betray his terrible condition--would he attack a waiter? or eat glass ?--and when he had mounted into a cab, he bade the man drive to Nichol's, with a lurking fear that there was no such place. The flaring, gassy entrance of the cafe speedily set his mind at rest; he was cheered besides to recognize his favourite waiter; his orders appeared to be coherent; the dinner, when it came, was quite a sensible meal, and he ate it with enjoyment.
'Upon my word,' he reflected, 'I am about tempted to indulge a hope.
Have I been hasty? Have I done what Robert Skill would have done ?' Robert Skill (I need scarcely mention) was the name of the principal character in Who Put Back the Clock? It had occurred to the author as a brilliant and probable invention; to readers of a critical turn, Robert appeared scarce upon a level with his surname; but it is the difficulty of the police romance, that the reader is always a man of such vastly greater ingenuity than the writer.
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