The Mystery of Evelin Delorme: A Hypnotic Story Read online

  PROLOGUE.

  Julian Paul Goetze died December 21st, 1885. This event removed thefinal reason for concealment of that strange story whose dark realityflung a shadow about his later years.

  At his death Goetze was in his thirty-fifth year, and for more than adecade previous had been considered one of the foremost portraitpainters of the younger school. I knew him intimately--was a frequentvisitor at his studio, and, I believe, the only confidant he was everknown to have.

  As I recall those years there is an unreality about them that I amunable to dispel. The problems discussed--the theories maintained oflife, death, art, poetry, and any number of other unfathomed subjects,appear to me now so preternatural--the conceptions of his wonderfulbrain so startling, that I can hardly realize having ever been a part,even though but a faint reflex, of that dazzling and unsated life.

  In appearance he was no less remarkable. His figure was rather slightthan otherwise, and of medium height. His features, though greatlymodified, were distinctly those of the American Indian. High cheekbones, slightly aquiline nose, dark olive skin. His eyes and hair were ablue black. You would hardly have called him handsome, but there wassomething in that fiercely intense face, in the lithe grace of movement,in the small and exquisitely shaped hands and feet, that made him afascinating, if not a dangerous, companion for the other sex. All ofthese had been bequeathed him by his mother, in whose veins ran theFrench and Indian blood in equal parts. From his father, a fair-hairedGerman, he had inherited only his name.

  His nature was a strange blending of opposing forces, forever at civilwar and each swaying him in turn. He had few friends, but those fewadored him for his splendid genius and prodigal generosity, pitying hisdarker side.

  When, as not unfrequently happened, he locked his studio and plunged fordays into abject depravity, they sought him out and led him back to hisbetter self. After the culmination of that singular affair narrated inthese papers, and for which he doubtless felt himself greatly to blame,these lapses became more and more frequent and protracted. The factswhich I have collected relating to this period of his life were many ofthem gathered bit by bit as the events occurred, and later from briefinterviews during temporary periods of consciousness just prior to hisdeath.

  It was in one of these that he apprised me of the existence of certainprivate papers, the contents of which would make the chain ofcircumstances complete. Then the fires that had blazed forever withinhim burned out his life.

  H. L. ST. LOUIS, NOV. 4th, 1890.

  NOTE BY THE AUTHOR.--The above, accompanied by a manuscript roll of considerable size, a crumpled, and yellow letter torn in halves, and a number of loose pages covered with peculiar writing (unsigned, though evidently the work of the unhappy artist) lie before me. It is with hesitating and unsteady hands that I separate these silent voices of the past, and gather them at last together into a living though unworthy echo of my own.