A Bid for Fortune. Guy Newell Boothby

my companion and the previous conjuring trick, I saw only a picture opening out before me—that of a handsomely furnished room, and a girl sitting in an easy chair crying as if her heart were breaking. The room I had never seen before, but the girl I should have known among a thousand. It was Phyllis, my sweetheart!

      ​I looked and looked, and as I gazed at her, I heard her call my name. "Oh, Dick! Dick! come to me!" Instantly I sprang to my feet, meaning to cross the room to her. Next moment I was aware of a loud crash. The scene vanished, my senses came back to me, and to my astonishment I found myself standing alongside the overturned restaurant table. The glass dish lay on the floor shattered into a thousand fragments. My friend, the conjurer, had disappeared.

      Having righted the table again, I went downstairs and explained my misfortune. When I had paid my bill I took my departure, more troubled in mind than I cared to confess. That it was only what he had called it, a conjuring trick, I felt I ought to be certain, but still it was clever and uncanny enough, I must own, to render me very uncomfortable.

      In vain I tried to drive the remembrance of the scene from my brain, but it would not be dispelled. At length, to satisfy myself, I resolved that if the memory of it remained with me so vividly in the morning I would take the bull by the horns and call at the Métropole to make enquiries.

      I returned to my hotel in time for dinner, but still I could not rid myself of the feeling of approaching calamity. Having sent my meal away almost untouched, I called a hansom and drove to the nearest theatre, but the picture of Phyllis crying and calling for me in vain kept me company throughout the performance, and brought me home miserable at the conclusion. All night long I dreamed of it, seeing the same picture again and again, and hearing the same despairing cry, "Oh, Dick! Dick! come to me!"

      In the morning there was only one thing to be done. Accordingly, after breakfast I set off to make sure that ​nothing was the matter. On the way I tried to reason with myself. I asked how it was that I, Dick Hatteras, a man who thought he knew the world, should have been so impressed with a bit of wizardry as to be willing to risk making a fool of myself before the two last people in the world I wanted to think me one. Once I was almost tempted to turn back, but while the intention held me the picture rose before my mind's eye again, and on I went more determined to solve the mystery than before.

      Arriving at the hotel, I paid my cabman off, and entered the hall. A gorgeously caparisoned porter stood on the steps, and of him I enquired where I could find Miss Wetherell. Imagine my surprise when he replied:

      "They've left, sir. Started yesterday afternoon, quite suddenly, for Paris, on their way back to Australia!"