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ork in." Then he paused. "Of course if you go to town," he added, "you will have to stay at some address we shall arrange for, and you will have to be ready to start work directly we tell you to." "Naturally," I said; "I only want--" I was saved from finishing my falsehood by a sudden sound from outside--the sound of a swing gate banging against its post. For a moment I had a horrible feeling that it might be the police. Savaroff jumped up and looked out of the window. Then with a little guttural exclamation he turned back to McMurtrie. "Hoffman!" he muttered, apparently in some surprise. Who Mr. Hoffman might be I had not the faintest notion, but the mention of the name brought the doctor to his feet at once. I think he was rather annoyed with Savaroff for being unnecessarily communicative. When he spoke, however, it was with his usual perfect composure. "Well, we will leave you at peace now, Mr. Lyndon. I should try to go to sleep again for a little while if I were you. I will come up later and see whether you would like some supper." He stopped and looked round the room. "Is there anything else you want that you haven't got?" "If you could advance me a box of cigarettes," I said, "it shall be the first charge on the new explosive." He nodded, smiling. "I will send Sonia up with it," he answered. Then, following Savaroff, he went out into the passage, carefully closing the door after him. Left alone, I lay back on the pillow in a frame of mind which I believe novelists describe as "chaotic." I had expected something rather unusual from my interview with McMurtrie, but these proposals of his could hardly be classed under such a mild heading as that. For sheer unexpectedness they about took the biscuit. I had read in books of a man's appearance being altered so completely that even his best friends failed to recognize him, but it had never occurred to me that such a thing could be done in real life--let alone in the simple fashion outlined by the doctor. Of course, if he was speaking the truth, there seemed no reason why his plan, fantastic as it might sound, should not turn out perfectly successful. A private hut on the Thames marshes was about the last place in which you would look for an escaped Dartmoor convict, especially when he had vanished into thin air within a few miles of Devonport. What worried me most in the matter was my apparent good luck in having fallen on my feet in this amazi
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