I looked at the man stupidly. Some dim association of ideas was already quickening, very little and deep, in my brain. It was the seed of a certain deductive reasoning—the stirring of a green shoot which, like the Indian juggler’s mango-tree, would push through the soil in a little and break into sudden leaf, and take my soul with knowledge.
“Geoletti?” I exclaimed at last, in a voice sharp with astonishment. And then in one leap light came in, and the tree burst into flower.
It was Mark Dalston whom this avenger was tracking to his doom!
He bowed sombrely. After a little pause I went nearer to him. Here was, as I have said, no coincidence; but the stupendousness of the destiny quite awed and humbled me. What was I worth, without this directing hand of Fate to guide me?
“Geoletti,” I said, looking at him intensely, but speaking very quietly, “I think—perhaps—it may be—I can tell you something about yourself.”
“Si, signore?” he answered as quietly, almost indifferently, for he can have had no apprehension of what was to come.
“You were a guide, once upon a time, in the Italian Alps, were you not?”
“Si, signore.” His eyelids flicked up swiftly, and were lowered again. His lips gasped a little.
“You knew a Mr Cecil Delane there. He offended you somehow. It is to be revenged on him, under his proper name of Mark Dalston, that you are now come into this part of the country. Is not this all so?”
I thought he would have fallen. He caught himself steady by the sofa end, and stood staring and gulping at me.