The Project Gutenberg eBook, Erik Dorn, by Ben Hecht

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Title: Erik Dorn

Author: Ben Hecht

Release Date: August 19, 2007 [eBook #22358]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)

***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ERIK DORN***

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ERIK DORN

by

BEN HECHT

G. P. Putnam's Sons
New York and London
The Knickerbocker Press
1921

Copyright, 1921
by
Ben Hecht

Printed in the United States of America

To

MARIE

CONTENTS

PAGE

PART I

SLEEP 1

PART II

DREAM 75

PART III

WINGS 173

PART IV

ADVENTURE 277

PART V

SILENCE 369

ERIK DORN

PART I

SLEEP

CHAPTER I

An old man sat in the shadows of the summer night. From a veranda chair
he looked at the stars. He wore a white beard, and his eyes, grown small
with age, watered continually as if he were weeping. Half-hidden under
his beard his emaciated lips kept the monotonous grimace of a smile on
his face.

He sat in the dark, a patient, trembling figure waiting for bedtime. His
feet, though he rested them all day, grew heavy at night. Of late this
weariness had increased. It reached like a caress into his mind.
Thoughts no longer formed themselves in the silences of his hours.
Instead, a gentle sleep, dreamless and dark, came upon him and left him
sitting with his little eyes, open and moist, fastened without sight
upon familiar objects.

As he sat, the withered body of this old man seemed to grow always more
motionless, except for his hands. Resting on his thighs, his twig-like
hands remained forever awake, their thin contorted fingers crawling
vaguely about like the legs of 8 long-impaled spiders.

The sound of a piano from the room behind him dropped into the old man's
s