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At various times, Larmy's category of beliefs included the single-tax, Buddhism, spiritualism, and a faith in the curative properties of blue glass. David and Henry Larmy would sit in the office of evenings discussing these things when honest people should be in bed. Henry never could tell us just how the talk drifted to hypnotism and the occult, nor when the current started that way.
"That which seemed corporeal has melted 'as a breath into the wind." The reporter shovelled the debris into the box, pushed it under a desk, and the two men hurried to close the office. As they stood on the threshold a moment, while the reporter clicked the key in the lock, a paper rustled and they heard a mouse scamper across the floor inside the empty room. "Let's go home," shivered Larmy.
Larmy had a pleasant social chat with Karl Marx, and had the spirits hunting all over the kingdom-come for Tom Paine and Murat. But the messenger either could not find them, or the line was busy with someone else, so these worthies never appeared.
As the winter deepened, Larmy and the reporter and the "father" had more and more converse. The "father" explained a theory of immortality which did not interest the reporter, but which Larmy heard eagerly.
We tell George that he is getting old, though he is still on the bright side of forty, because he likes to come down town of evenings and hold a parliament with Henry Larmy and Dan Gregg and Colonel Morrison. Sometimes they hold it in the office and settle important affairs.
He seemed to be coming out of a deep sleep, and grinned up blinking: "Gee, I must 'a' gone to sleep on you fellows. I was up late last night." Larmy told the boy what had happened, and the three of them looked at the paper, but could make nothing of it. David shook his head. "Not on your life," he laughed.
A month went by, the season changed, and changed again, and a year was gone, when the Government sent word to Larmy whom the boy seemed to have named for his next friend that David's body would be brought back for burial if his friends desired it. So in the fall of 1900, when the Presidential campaign was at its height, the conquering hero came home, and we gave him a military funeral.
When it was a full line he grabbed the lever, that sent the line over to the metal-pot to be cast, and his hand fell back in his lap, while the dripping of the brasses continued and the blue and white keys on the board sank and rose, although no finger touched them. Larmy squinted at the thing, and held his long, fuzzy, unshaven chin in his hand.
Larmy stared at the boy with open mouth, clearly afraid of the spectacle that was before him. A night creaking of the building made him jump, and he moistened his lips as the pencil wrote on. When the sheet was filled, the pencil fell and David looked about him with a smile and dropping his head on the desk began to yawn.
The sound rose stronger and stronger; over and over again the song repeated itself; then very gently its strength began to fail; and finally it sank into a ghostly tinkle that still carried the melody till it faded into silence. "That," said the reporter, "is the song that was in his heart 'Love's Golden Dream. I'm satisfied." "The last link," shuddered Larmy.
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