My life hung by a thread, and I knew it.  At that final moment I thought with his mind, I felt with his fingers—­I was as certain as if I had seen it of what he kept hidden from me in the drawer.

“Wait a little,” I said.  “You have got the door locked—­you see I don’t move—­you see my hands are empty.  Wait a little.  I have something more to say.”

“You have said enough,” he replied, with a sudden composure so unnatural and so ghastly that it tried my nerves as no outbreak of violence could have tried them.  “I want one moment for my own thoughts, if you please.  Do you guess what I am thinking about?”

“Perhaps I do.”

“I am thinking,” he remarked quietly, “whether I shall add to the disorder in this room by scattering your brains about the fireplace.”

If I had moved at that moment, I saw in his face that he would have done it.

“I advise you to read two lines of writing which I have about me,” I rejoined, “before you finally decide that question.”

The proposal appeared to excite his curiosity.  He nodded his head.  I took Pesca’s acknowledgment of the receipt of my letter out of my pocket-book, handed it to him at arm’s length, and returned to my former position in front of the fireplace.

He read the lines aloud:  “Your letter is received.  If I don’t hear from you before the time you mention, I will break the seal when the clock strikes.”

Another man in his position would have needed some explanation of those words—­the Count felt no such necessity.  One reading of the note showed him the precaution that I had taken as plainly as if he had been present at the time when I adopted it.  The expression of his face changed on the instant, and his hand came out of the drawer empty.

“I don’t lock up my drawer, Mr. Hartright,” he said, “and I don’t say that I may not scatter your brains about the fireplace yet.  But I am a just man even to my enemy, and I will acknowledge beforehand that they are cleverer brains than I thought them.  Come to the point, sir!  You want something of me?”

“I do, and I mean to have it.”

“On conditions?”

“On no conditions.”

His hand dropped into the drawer again.

“Bah! we are travelling in a circle,” he said, “and those clever brains of yours are in danger again.  Your tone is deplorably imprudent, sir—­moderate it on the spot!  The risk of shooting you on the place where you stand is less to me than the risk of letting you out of this house, except on conditions that I dictate and approve.  You have not got my lamented friend to deal with now—­you are face to face with Fosco!  If the lives of twenty Mr. Hartrights were the stepping-stones to my safety, over all those stones I would go, sustained by my sublime indifference, self-balanced by my impenetrable calm.  Respect me, if you love your own life!  I summon you to answer three questions before you open your lips again.  Hear them—­they are necessary to this interview.  Answer them—­they are necessary to me.”  He held up one finger of his right hand.  “First question!” he said.  “You come here possessed of information which may be true or may be false—­where did you get it?”