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Arthur Bell was alone in his study, and the house had gone quiet around him. The lamp on his desk made a small circle of light on the blotter, and the rest of the room lay in a comfortable dimness. Three letters lay before him, each written in his careful hand. Each address had been checked once. Each sheet had been folded and inserted. Each envelope had been sealed. He set the last one on the pile at his right hand, squared the pile with the edge of the blotter, and allowed himself a small inward satisfaction.

The cheque had been sitting on the blotter since late afternoon. He had intended to lock it away before bed. Now he picked it up, folded it once, and slipped it into the inner breast pocket of the coat that hung over the back of his chair. He did this without much thought, only with the vague intention of keeping it close until he had finished with the letters. Then he put the envelopes in the side pocket of the same coat and stood.

When the clock on the mantel showed half-past twelve, he put on the coat and let himself out. The street was cold but not bitter. The houses were shut up, their windows dark except for one pale curtain above a fanlight. The lamps were far apart, and the pavement gleamed in the few patches of light. He walked toward the postbox with his collar turned up and his hands in his pockets. Near the low railings that guarded a basement area, a sudden gust came between the houses and lifted the edge of his coat. The envelopes shifted in his side pocket with a thick paper sound. Arthur stopped at once and pressed a hand against them. He counted the envelopes through the cloth. They were all there. The gust passed, and he walked on.

At the postbox he pushed the letters through one by one, listening to each fall. Then he turned back. Indoors again, he locked the front door and went upstairs. He took off the coat and hung it over the back of the bedroom chair. His waistcoat followed. He emptied his pockets onto the dressing table: a key ring, a linen handkerchief, a silver pencil, two small coins. He reached into the inner breast pocket of the coat. It was empty. He reached in again, pressing his fingers along the seam. Nothing. The cheque was not there.

His first response was not fear but a flat refusal to accept the fact. He searched the inner pocket a third time, then the side pockets, then the pockets of his waistcoat and trousers. He went down to the study still in his shirtsleeves. The desk received his full attention. He lifted the blotter and turned over every paper beneath it. He opened the drawers one by one and ran his hand into the corners. He looked along the carpet, into the wastepaper basket, behind the books on the low shelf, and under the desk and the sideboard. He did all this methodically, and at the end he stood up with his hands on his hips.

Only then did he allow himself to consider the letters. He had sealed them quickly, with the cheque still on the blotter, and he could not be sure that he had not, by some absurd movement, folded the cheque into one of the envelopes. He reviewed the recipients one by one. There was a letter to a solicitor in Lincoln’s Inn, and one to his clerk, and one to a friend at Tunbridge Wells. If the cheque had gone into any of them, it would be beyond his reach until morning, and the explanation would be awkward enough to make him wince.

At twenty past one he took the small lantern from the hall shelf and went outside again. He held the lantern close to the ground and walked the entire distance from his door to the postbox. He examined the gutter, the curb, the stone steps, the iron grates, and the shallow doorway of the stationer’s. The light threw his shadow ahead of him. When he passed the low railings, he stopped and lowered the lantern. The iron was cold and wet under his hand. He saw no white slip among the bars. He went as far as the postbox and then turned back. Nothing.

The second search of the study was shorter because there was now almost nowhere left to search. He moved books, lifted the rug at its corners, and laid the lantern on the floor to look for the shadow of a thin white edge. There was none. As he got to his feet, a thought came to him with a kind of dry amusement. He had made his living by noticing the weak points in other men’s accounts, and yet he could not establish what had happened to a single cheque in his own pocket. It was not a comfortable thought.

He looked at the clock. It was late, and the street would not be easier to search until daylight. He went up to bed and lay on his back, still going over the sequence. The cheque had been in his hand. Then it had been in his coat. Then he had walked to the postbox. Then the gust had come near the railings. Then the postbox. Then home. At some point the sheet had left him, but he could not find the point.

He must have slept. In his sleep he was walking down his own street, but the street was simplified, as if it had been drawn for a diagram. There were no lamps and no traffic. His attention was not on the houses or the pavement. It went directly to the railings a few doors from his own. He walked to them. At the base of one iron bar, on the side nearest the pavement, the missing cheque lay curled around the metal. The fold he had made was still in it. One edge was lifted, but the wind had pressed the rest around the bar. He saw the precise place. He did not hear a voice. He did not see anyone. He simply looked at the cheque and knew where it was.

He woke with the image behind his eyes. It was still dark, and the candle on the bedside table had not been lit. He sat up. The cheque was valuable, and the street would be busy by morning, and checking the location would cost only a few minutes. He did not spend long weighing it. He dressed, took the lantern, and let himself out.

The air had the same coldness. He walked to the exact railing from the dream. At first he saw nothing. The lantern made a shifting pool of light around the base of the iron. He crouched. There, caught around the metal exactly as he had seen it, was the cheque. It was damp along one edge, and the fold was creased, but it was whole. He pulled it free carefully and held it near the flame. The name of the drawer, the sum, the signature were all correct. It was his cheque.

He stayed there for a moment, knee on the cold pavement. Relief came first, then a quieter astonishment. He had passed these railings twice, and both times he had seen nothing. He did not know how the dream had led him back to the one bar. The street was still empty. He put the cheque safely in his inner pocket and went home.

In the study, he turned up the lamp and laid the cheque on the blotter. Then he closed his eyes and tried to recall the gust. It had come near the railings, sudden and low. His coat had lifted. There had been, at the edge of his vision, a small pale movement down near the iron, but he had been looking at the letters in his side pocket, and the movement had not reached his attention. It was possible, he thought, that his eye had recorded the paper curling around the bar even while his conscious attention remained fixed on the envelopes. Sleep had simply returned the record to him. He did not regard the matter as proved. It was only a reasonable account, and it was one he preferred because it required no departure from the way he understood the world.

He folded the cheque once more and placed it in the left-hand drawer of the desk. The key was in the lock. He turned it and heard the bolt click. He tried the drawer. It held. He unlocked it, and locked it again. Then he put the key on the small tray beside the lamp, turned out the light, and went back upstairs to bed.

This story is based on a true account included in Andrew Lang’s The Book of Dreams and Ghosts. You can read the original account in the free Project Gutenberg edition. And if you are interested in fresh and modern content about dreams that came true, you can find them in my book “Dreams That Wake You Up”, a collection of real dreams and real outcomes, directly from my clients, printed with their consent.

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