He laid the cord upon the table, advanced to the door and opened it wide. I saw him slide his hand across the lock.
"The key is in my pocket," I said.
He looked at me with a sorrowful shake of the head.
"Your suspicions discompose me very much," and he came back for a candle. I noticed too that he carelessly picked up the cord again.
"I think," said I, "that I will help you to fetch that bottle;" and I went with him into the hall.
There was something new in the man's bearing which began to alarm me. He still used the same tone of aggrieved affection, but with an indefinable difference which was none the less very apparent to me. His effort seemed no longer to aim at misleading me, but rather to sustain the pretence that he was aiming to mislead me. It seemed to me that since he had become aware of what I knew concerning his treachery he had devised some new plan, and kept his old tone to hinder me from suspecting it. I noticed, too, a certain deliberateness in the indifference of his walk, a certain intention in the discomposure.
In the hall he stopped, and setting down the candle upon a cabinet, turned to face me.
"Why did you come with me?" he asked gently.
"I did not know but what you might call your servants, and, as you put it, I am delicately circumstanced."
He raised his hands in a gesture of pity.