"You'll not live to repent it," I replied. "I've bound your fate with mine by ties no mortal can unsolve."
"Enough of that rubbish," he retorted harshly. "You cannot haze me twice. You could not have at all if I had stopped to think or been quite well. But I'm liverish and out of sorts to-day—the result of staying up all night nursing Ottley."
"You'll see when the time comes—if you have the courage," I responded in an acrid tone. "You cannot scare me, Belleville, because you cannot harm me without hurting yourself—and in your deeps of heart, you rogue, you know it."
He burst out laughing, but there was a note of nervousness in his mocking mirth that pleased me passing well.
"Pah!" he said at last. "Would you sit there trussed up like a chooky skewered for the table if you had the power you pretend?"
"Idiot!" I snapped. "Can electricity unbuckle straps without machinery? Yet it can splinter rocks without an effort and without assistance."
"Ah!" said he, "ah! So you pretend——"
"Try me!" I interrupted.
"Not I," cried he. "I've encountered so many wonders lately that I'm now beginning to regard what I of old considered the impossible as the most likely thing of all to happen. I don't believe you, Pinsent, but neither do I disbelieve you. Therefore, acting on the kindly hint you dropped, I'll take all sane precautions. Au revoir."