’I presume, Mr Lessingham, that all this is but a prelude to the play.  At present I do not see where it is that I come in.’

Still for some seconds he was silent.  When he spoke his voice was grave and sombre, as if he were burdened by a weight of woe.

’Unfortunately, as you put it, all this has been but a prelude to the play.  Were it not so I should not now stand in such pressing want of the services of a confidential agent,—­that is, of an experienced man of the world, who has been endowed by nature with phenomenal perceptive faculties, and in whose capacity and honour I can place the completest confidence.’

I smiled,—­the compliment was a pointed one.

‘I hope your estimate of me is not too high.’

’I hope not,—­for my sake, as well as for your own.  I have heard great things of you.  If ever man stood in need of all that human skill and acumen can do for him, I certainly am he.’

His words aroused my curiosity.  I was conscious of feeling more interested than heretofore.

’I will do my best for you.  Man can do no more.  Only give my best a trial.’

‘I will.  At once.’

He looked at me long and earnestly.  Then, leaning forward, he said, lowering his voice perhaps unconsciously,

’The fact is, Mr Champnell, that quite recently events have happened which threaten to bridge the chasm of twenty years, and to place me face to face with that plague spot of the past.  At this moment I stand in imminent peril of becoming again the wretched thing I was when I fled from that den of all the devils.  It is to guard me against this that I have come to you.  I want you to unravel the tangled thread which threatens to drag me to my doom,—­and, when unravelled to sunder it—­for ever, if God wills! —­in twain.’

‘Explain.’

To be frank, for the moment I thought him mad.  He went on.

’Three weeks ago, when I returned late one night from a sitting in the House of Commons, I found, on my study table, a sheet of paper on which there was a representation—­marvellously like!—­of the creature into which, as it seemed to me, the woman of the songs was transformed as I clutched her throat between my hands.  The mere sight of it brought back one of those visitations of which I have told you, and which I thought I had done with for ever,—­I was convulsed by an agony of fear, thrown into a state approximating to a paralysis both of mind and body.’

‘But why?’

’I cannot tell you.  I only know that I have never dared to allow my thoughts to recur to that last dread scene, lest the mere recurrence should drive me mad.’

’What was this you found upon your study table,—­merely a drawing?’

’It was a representation, produced by what process I cannot say, which was so wonderfully, so diabolically, like the original, that for a moment I thought the thing itself was on my table.’