stripes painted on it. Towards the lower point a little bit of the varnish had been broken off and the reddish wood underneath was visible. The top was much better constructed than the cheap toys sold in the village. It was hollow and contained in its interior a mechanism started by a pressure on the upper end. Once set in motion the little top spun about the room for some time.
“Oh, isn’t that pretty! Is this mechanism your own invention?” asked Muller smiling. Gyuri watched the top with drawn brows and murmured something about “childish foolishness.”
“Yes, it is my own invention,” said the patient, flattered. He started out on an absolutely technical explanation of the mechanism of tops in general and of his own in particular, an explanation so lucid and so well put that no one would have believed the man who was speaking was not in possession of the full powers of his mind.
Muller listened very attentively with unfeigned interest.
“But you have made more important inventions than this, haven’t you?” he asked when the other stopped talking. Varna’s eyes flashed and his voice dropped to a tone of mystery as he answered: “Yes indeed I have. But I did not have time to finish them. For I had become some one else.”
“Some one else?”
“Cardillac,” whispered Varna, whose mania was now getting the best of him again.
“Cardillac? You mean the notorious goldsmith who lived in Paris 200 years ago? Why, he’s dead.”
Varna’s pale lips curled in a superior smile. “Oh, yes—that’s what people think, but it’s a mistake. He is still alive—I am—I have—although of course there isn’t much opportunity here—”
Gyuri cleared his throat with a rasping noise.
“What were you saying, friend Cardillac?” asked Muller with a great show of interest.
“I have done things here that nobody has found out. It gives me great pleasure to see the authorities so helpless over the riddles I have given them to solve. Oh, indeed, sir, you would never imagine how stupid they are here.”
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