I answered:  “I am taking you to a place where you may be alone as long as you choose.”  So he entered the car, and a few minutes later T-S and I were escorting him into the latter’s showy mansion.

We were getting to be rather scared now, for Carpenter’s silence was forbidding.  But again he said:  “I wish to be alone.”  We took him upstairs to a bed-room, and shut him in and left him—­but taking the precaution to lock the door.

Downstairs, we stood and looked at each other, feeling like two school-boys who had been playing truant, and would soon have to face the teacher.  “You stay here, Billy!” insisted the magnate.  “You gotta see him in de mornin’!  I von’t!”

“I’ll stay,” I said, and looked at my watch.  It was after one o’clock.  “Give me an alarm-clock,” I said, “because Carpenter wakes with the birds, and we don’t want him escaping by the window.”

So it came about that at daybreak I tapped on Carpenter’s door, softly, so as not to waken him if he were asleep.  But he answered, “Come in;” and I entered, and found him sitting by the window, watching the dawn.

I stood timidly in the middle of the room, and began:  “I realize, of course, Mr. Carpenter, that I have taken a very great liberty with you—­”

“You have said it,” he replied; and his eyes were awful.

“But,” I persisted, “if you knew what danger you were in—­”

Said he:  “Do you think that I came to Mobland to look for a comfortable life?”

“But,” I pleaded, “if you only knew that particular gang!  Do you realize that they had planted an infernal machine, a dynamite bomb, in that room?  And all the world was to read in the newspapers this morning that you had been conspiring to blow up somebody!”

Said Carpenter:  “Would it have been the first time that I have been lied about?”

“Of course,” I argued, “I know what I have done—­”

“You can have no idea what you have done.  You are too ignorant.”

I bowed my head, prepared to take my punishment.  But at once Carpenter’s voice softened.  “You are a part of Mobland,” he said; “you cannot help yourself.  In Mobland it is not possible for even a martyrdom to proceed in an orderly way.”

I gazed at him a moment, bewildered.  “What’s the good of a martyrdom?” I cried.

“The good is, that men can be moved in no other way; they are in that childish stage of being, where they require blood sacrifice.”

“But what kind of martyrdom!” I argued.  “So undignified and unimpressive!  To have hot tar smeared over your body, and be hanged by the neck like a common criminal!”

I realized that this last phrase was unfortunate.  Said Carpenter:  “I am used to being treated as a common criminal.”

“Well,” said I, in a voice of despair, “of course, if you’re absolutely bent on being hanged—­if you can’t think of anything you would prefer—­”

I stopped, for I saw that he had covered his face with his hands.  In the silence I heard him whisper:  “I prayed last night that this cup might pass from me; and apparently my prayer has been answered.”