It was, no doubt, the course of public events, culminating
in the Great War, which gave to his mania its special turn, to his
delusion its monstrous (but, as Doctor Mary was aware, by no means
unprecedented) character. By the time of his meeting with Beaumaroy the
delusion was complete; through all the second half of 1918 he
followed--so far as his mind could now follow anything rationally--in his
own person and fortunes the fate of the man whom he believed himself to
be, appropriating the hopes, the fears, the imagined ambitions, the
physical infirmity, of that self-created other self.
But he wrapped it all in deep secrecy, for, as the conviction of his true
identity grew complete, his fears were multiplied. Radbolts indeed! The
whole of Christendom--Principalities and Powers--were on his track. They
would shut him up, kill him perhaps! Cunningly he hid his secret--save
what could not be entirely hidden, the physical deformity. But he hid it
with his shawl; he never ate out of his own house; the combination
knife-and-fork was kept sedulously hidden. Only to Beaumaroy did he
reveal the hidden thing; and, later, on Beaumaroy's persuasion, he let
into the portentous secret one faithful servant--Beaumaroy's unsavory
retainer, Sergeant Hooper.
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