nt the trap-door control; the trap itself has to be taken out
before you can set it again, and it's a job even with the proper lever.
After what's happened and the language you've been using, Mr. Gillon,
I'm afraid I don't care to trust myself within reach of your very
powerful arms, either to light the gas or to meddle with my little
monster."

"See here," I said through the teeth that I had set against my pain.
"You're as mad as a hatter; that's the only excuse for you----"

"Thank you!" he snapped in. "Then it won't be the worse for me if I _do_
give you a taste of hell before your death and--cremation!"

"I'm sorry for you," I went on, partly because I did not know that the
insane call for more tact than the sane, and partly because I was far
from sure which this man was, but had resolved in any case to appeal
with all my might to his self-interest. "I'm sorry for anybody who loses
his wits, but sorriest for those who get them back again and have to pay
for what they did when they weren't themselves. You go mad and commit a
murder, but you're dead sane when they hang you! That seems to me about
the toughest luck a man could have, but it looks very like being your
own."

"Which of these four candles do you back to win?" inquired Nettleton,
looking at them and not at me. "I put my money on the one nearest you,
and I back this one here for a place."

"Two people know all about this, I may tell you," said I with more
effect. Nettleton looked up. "Uvo Delavoye's one, and your old Sarah's
the other."

"That be blowed for a yarn!" he answered, after a singularly lucid
interval, if he was not lucid all the time. "I think I see you walking
into a trap like this if you knew it was here!"

"It's the truth!" I blustered, feeling to my horror that the truth had
not rung true.

"All right! Then you deserve all you get for coming into another man's
house----"

"When your servant came for me, and when we found out together that you
were trying to burn it down?"

I was doing my best to reason with him now, but he was my master, sane
or crazy. His cleverness was diabolical. He took the new point out of my
mouth. "Yes--for going away and standing by to see me do it!" he cried.
"But that's not the only crow I've got to pluck with you, young fellow,
and the other jacks-in-office behind you. Must pay your dirty
extortionate rent, must I? Very last absolutely final application, was
it? Going to put a man in possession, are yo