must have been right—­that I must have struck the brute on the back of the head without realizing in my anger what I was doing.  Then, when I remembered how I had left him crouching against the wall, spitting out curses at me through his cut and bleeding lips, I knew that the idea was nonsense.  The wound which they found in his head must have killed him instantly.  No man who had received a blow like that would ever speak or move again.

The one thing I felt certain of was that in some mysterious way or other George was mixed up in the business.  It was incredible that he could have acted as he did at the trial unless he had had some stronger reason than mere dislike for me.  That he did dislike me I knew well, but my six years’ association with him had taught me that he would never allow 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.