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The Man with the Black Feather
The Man With the Black Feather
HISTORICAL PREFACE THE SANDALWOOD BOX
One evening last year I perceived in the waiting-room of my newspaper, Le Matin, a man dressed in black, his face heavy with the darkest despair, whose dry, dead eyes seemed to receive the images of things like unmoving mirrors.
He was seated; and there rested on his knees a sandalwood box inlaid with polished steel. An office-boy told me that he had sat there motionless, silent, awaiting my coming, for three mortal hours.
I invited this figure of despair into my office and offered him a chair. He did not take it; he walked straight to my desk, and set down on it the sandalwood box.
Then he said to me in an expressionless, far-away voice: "Monsieur, this box is yours. My friend, M. Theophrastus Longuet, charged me to bring it to you."
He bowed and was going to the door, when I stopped him.
"For goodness sake, don't run away like that!" I said sharply. "I can't receive this box without knowing what it contains."
"I don't know what it contains myself," he said in the same dull, expressionless tone. "This box is locked; the key is lost. You will have to break it open to find out."
"At any rate I should like to know the name of the bearer," I said firmly.
"My friend, M. Theophrastus Longuet, called me 'Adolphe,'" he said in the mournfullest tone.
"If M. Theophrastus Longuet had brought me this box himself, he would certainly have told me what it contains," I said stiffly. "I regret that M. Theophrastus Longuet—"