* We were talking about unusual events that had no natural explanation. One of the strangers among us was a little man with a pale face. He was listening carefully but did not say a word.
* To include him in the talk, Dabney asked him if he had any experience which had no explanation.
* The stranger said he would tell us a true one which was stranger than stories and which had completed itself hat afternoon.
* The storyteller was living in an old house in Ormond street in London. There were patches of dampness on the walls of his bedroom. One of these patches was exactly like a human face. Lying in bed, he used to watch it. It did not change like other patches and he considered it as a fellow-lodger.
* He fell ill. As he lay in bed, he looked at that face which was that of an unusual man with unusual head and a nose with a curious turn. It controlled him in such a way that it became the chief thing in his thoughts, day and night.
* When he got better, he went in search of such a man in all crowded places because he felt that he and the man were in some way connected by fate.
* He neglected everything and searched everywhere for that face. People and the police became suspicious.
* At last the storyteller saw a man with that face in a taxi. He took another taxi to follow him. The man's taxi went to Charing Corss railway station. The storyteller found his man standing with two ladies and a little girl on the platform. They were going to take the train to Folkestone to go to France.
* As the storyteller could not speak with the man, he took the same train. Then he went on board the same boat the man and his group had taken, hoping to catch him before it sailed. But, he and his group got into a private room and he had to sail to France. He waited opposite their door. It was clear the man was rich.
* After half an hour, the man and the little girl got out of the room. It was the storyteller's chance to speak with him. He asked the man to give him his card as he wanted to communicate with him. Astonished, the man gave him his card believing he was a mad man.
* The man's name on the card was Mr Ormond Wall with an address in USA. When he read the name, he fainted. When he came to himself, he was in a hospital and was in a serious condition for some weeks.
* After a month, he went to his old dwelling and began to discover all about that American. He found out that he was a millionaire with English parents who had lived in London.
* Yesterday morning, the storyteller woke up to find the face on the wall becoming very faint. He went out and read in the papers about a motor accident an American millionaire called "Mr Ormond Wall". had His car had overturned and his condition was serious. When he went back home, he looked at the faint face. It suddenly disappeared. He knew later that Mr Wall died at the same moment.
* The storyteller said that there were three extraordinary things in his story. First, the patch on the wall in London was like the face of a man in America and that it disappeared when he died. The second was that the man's name was related to the place, the street and the wall.
* The storyteller was leaving when one of the group asked him about the third thing. He said that he had made up the whole story half an hour ago. It was not a true story as he had pretended when he began telling it.
الخميس أبريل 24, 2008 1:12 pm
