door, and sat
down on it, with his left arm resting on the table. The cage with the
white mice was close to him, and the little creatures scampered out of
their sleeping-place as his heavy arm shook the table, and peered at
him through the gaps in the smartly painted wires.

"On a matter of life and death," he repeated to himself. "Those words
are more serious, perhaps, than you think. What do you mean?"

"What I say."

The perspiration broke out thickly on his broad forehead. His left
hand stole over the edge of the table. There was a drawer in it, with
a lock, and the key was in the lock. His finger and thumb closed over
the key, but did not turn it.

"So you know why I am leaving London?" he went on. "Tell me the
reason, if you please." He turned the key, and unlocked the drawer as
he spoke.

"I can do better than that," I replied. "I can SHOW you the reason, if
you like."

"How can you show it?"

"You have got your coat off," I said. "Roll up the shirt-sleeve on
your left arm, and you will see it there."

The same livid leaden change passed over his face which I had seen pass
over it at the theatre. The deadly glitter in his eyes shone steady
and straight into mine. He said nothing. But his left hand slowly
opened the table-drawer, and softly slipped into it. The harsh grating
noise of something heavy that he was moving unseen to me sounded for a
moment, then ceased. The silence that followed was so intense that the
faint ticking nibble of the white mice at their wires was distinctly
audible where I stood.

My life hung by a thread, and I knew it. At that final moment I
thought with HIS mind, I felt with HIS fingers--I was as certain as if
I had seen it of what he kept hidden from me in the drawer.

"Wait a little," I said. "You have got the door locked--you see I
don't move--you see my hands are empty. Wait a little. I have
something more to say."

"You have said enough," he replied, with a sudden composure so
unnatural and so ghastly that it tried my nerves as no outbreak of
violence could have tried them. "I want one moment for my own
thoughts, if you please. Do you guess what I am thinking about?"

"Perhaps I do."

"I am thinking," he remarked quietly, "whether I shall add to the
disorder in this room by scattering your brains about the fireplace."

If I had moved at that moment, I saw in his face that he would have
done it.

"I advise you to read two lines of writing whic