"Thank you," I replied. The tea would assist me in my resolve not to sleep.
The teapot being emptied, I lit the cigar Devlin had given me.
"I owe you an explanation," he said, puffing the smoke from his cigar into a series of circles. "I take it as a fact that Lemon is suffering from some kind of prophetic vision in connection with the murder of Lizzie Melladew in Victoria Park on Friday night."
"It is so," I said.
"Part of my explanation lies in the admission that he received that forewarning from me."
"Then you knew it was done," I cried.
"I did not know it. It passed through the mind of a customer whose hair I was dressing. I do not call that knowing a thing. I am something of a thought-reader, my dear sir, and I possess a certain power, under suitable conditions, of conveying my impressions to another person. That is the extent of my explanation. Excuse me for making it so brief."
Never in my life had I smoked a cigar with a fragrance so exquisite. Not only exquisite, but overpowering. It beguiled my senses, and had such an effect upon me that the last twenty or thirty words uttered by Devlin seemed to be spoken at a great distance from me. This sense of distance affected not only his voice, but himself and all surrounding things. He and they seemed to recede into space, as it were, not bounded by the walls of the small apartment in which we were sitting. I had a dim desire to continue the conversation, and to press Devlin to be more explicit, but it died away. Everything floated in a mist around me, and in this state I fell asleep.