s, when unknowingly we stand on the threshold of action? And
who should expect me to foresee that the man who was to touch the
spring of my life's action sat before me--mocked of me, dubbed the
Perfect Fool--over whose dead body I was to tread the paths of danger
and the intricate ways of strange adventure?

But I would not weary you with more of these facts than are absolutely
necessary for the understanding of this story, surpassing strange,
which I judge it to be as much my duty as my privilege to write. Let us
go back to the Gare du Nord, and the compartment wherein Mary and
Roderick slept, while the Perfect Fool and I faced each other,
surfeited with meteorological observations, sick to weariness with
reflections upon the probability of being late or arriving before time.
I would well have been silent and dozed as the others were doing; of a
truth, I had done so had it not become very evident that the man who
had begun to bore me wished at last to say something, relating neither
to the weather nor to the speed of our train. His restless manner, the
fidgeting of his hands with certain papers which he had taken from his
great-coat pocket, the shifting of the small grey eyes, marked that
within him which suffered not show except in privacy; and I waited for
him, making pretence of interest in the great plain of hedgeless
pasture-land which bordered the track on each side. At last he spoke,
and, speaking, seemed to be the Perfect Fool no longer.

"They're both asleep, aren't they?" he asked suddenly, as he put his
hand, which seemed to tremble, upon my arm, and pointed to the
sleepers. "Would you mind making sure--quite sure--before I
speak?--that is, if you will let me, for I have a favour to ask."

To see the man grave and evidently concerned was to me so unusual that
for a moment I looked at him rather than at Roderick or Mary, and
waited to know if the gravity were not of his humour and not of any
deeper import. A single glance at him convinced me for the second time
that I did him wrong. He was looking at me with a fitful pleading look
unlike anything he had shown previously. In answer to his request I
assured him at once that he might speak his mind; that, even if
Roderick should overhear us, I would pledge my word for his good faith.
Then only did he unbosom himself and tell me freely what he had to say.

"I wanted to speak to you some days ago," he said earnestly and
quickly, as his hands continued to play w