any personal motive to interfere with a chance of
making money. By sending me to the gallows or into penal servitude
he was practically ruining himself, for with all his acuteness and
business knowledge he was quite deficient in any sort of inventive
power. And yet he had not hesitated to do it, and to do it by a piece
of lying sufficiently cold-blooded and deliberate to make Judas pale
with envy.

If there had been any apparent chance of his being able to rob me by
the proceeding, I could have understood it. But my business interests
as far as past inventions went were safe in the hands of my lawyers,
and although I had told him a certain amount about the new explosive
which I had been working at, it was quite impossible for him to turn
it to any practical use.

No, George must have had some other reason for perjuring his
unpleasant soul, and the only one I could think of was that he had
purposely turned the case against me in order to shield the real
murderer. He had been fairly well acquainted with the dead man, I
knew--their tastes indeed ran on somewhat similar lines--and it was
just possible that he was aware who had committed the crime.

The thought filled me, as it always had filled me, with a bitter fury.
Again and again in my cell I had fancied myself escaping from the
prison and choking the truth out of my cousin's throat with my
fingers, and now that the first part of this picture had come true, I
vowed silently to myself that nothing should stop the remainder from
following it. Whatever McMurtrie might propose, I would see George
once again face to face, even if death or recapture was the price I
had to pay.

I had just arrived at this conclusion when I heard the sound of
footsteps in the passage outside. Then the handle of the door turned,
and McMurtrie appeared on the threshold with Savaroff looming up
behind him. There was a moment's silence, while the doctor stood there
smiling down on me as blandly as ever.

"May we come in?" he inquired. "We are not interrupting your tea, I
hope."

"No, I have done tea, thank you," I said, with a gesture towards the
tray.

Why it was so, I can't say, but McMurtrie's politeness always filled
me with a feeling of repulsion. There was something curiously sinister
about it.

He stepped forward into the room, followed by Savaroff, who closed the
door behind him. The latter then lounged across and sat down on the
window-sill, McMurtrie remaining standing by my b