ant in Berlin, last night, that I was watching your repast."

"I do not believe it," I answered angrily. "It is impossible that you
could have been there, if only for the reason that there was no train to
bring you."

He smiled pityingly upon me.

"I am beginning to think, my friend," he said, "that you are not so
clever as I at first supposed you. I wonder what you would say if I were
to tell you, that while Valerie was playing for Schuncke's
entertainment, I, who was travelling along between Prague and Dresden,
was an interested spectator of the whole scene. Shall I describe to you
the arrangement of the room? Shall I tell you how Schuncke leant against
the wall near the door, his hands folded before him, and his great head
nodding? How you sat at the table near the fireplace, building castles
in the air, upon which, by the way, I offer you my felicitations? while
Valerie, standing on the other side of the room, made music for you
all? It is strange that I should know all that, particularly as I did
not do myself the honour of calling at the restaurant, is it not?"

I made no answer. To tell the truth, I did not know what to say. Pharos
chuckled as he observed my embarrassment.

"You will learn wisdom before I have done with you," he continued.
"However, that is enough on the subject just now. Let us talk about
something else. There is much to be done to-night, and I shall require
your assistance."

The variety of emotions to which I had been subjected that day had
exercised such an effect upon me that, by this time, I was scarcely
capable of even a show of resistance. In my own mind I felt morally
certain that when he said there was much to do he meant the
accomplishment of some new villainy, but what form it was destined to
take I neither knew nor cared. He had got me so completely under his
influence by this time that he could make me do exactly as he required.

"What is it you are going to do?" I inquired, more because I saw that he
expected me to say something than for any other reason.

"I am going to get us all out of this place and back to England without
loss of time," he answered, in a tone of triumph.

"To England?" I replied, and the hideous mockery of his speech made me
laugh aloud; as bitter a laugh surely as was ever uttered by mortal man.
"You accused me just now of not being as clever as you had at first
supposed me. I return the compliment. You have evidently not heard that
every route into