“And you!” he responded placidly. “This is a happy coincidence, Mr. Bickerdike.”
I passed him, and went to shake Sir Calvin by the hand. The look of my poor friend as he gave me formal welcome inflamed my anger to that degree that I could contain myself no longer. I felt, too, that the moment had come; that it would be criminal in myself to postpone it longer; that I must give this fellow to understand that his villainy had not passed wholly undetected and unrecorded. Forgetting, I confess, in my exasperation, my promise to the lawyers, I turned on him in an irresistible impulse of passion.
“How, sir,” I said, “have you succeeded in reducing my friend the General to this state?”
There followed a moment’s startled silence, and then Sir Calvin stiffened, and sat up, and cleared his throat.
“Bickerdike,” he said, “don’t be a damned ass!”
“That’s as it may be, sir,” I said, now in a towering rage. “You shall judge of the extent of my folly when you have heard what I insist upon making known to you.”
He sat looking at me in a frowning, wondering sort of way; then shrugged his shoulders.
“Very well—if you insist,” he said.
“I have no alternative,” I answered. “If I am to do my duty, as I consider it, at this crucial pass, when the life of a dear friend hangs in the balance, all stuff of punctilio must be let go to the winds. If I hold the opinion that an evil influence is at work in this house, operating somehow to sinister but mysterious ends, it would be wickedness on my part to withhold the evidence on which that opinion is founded. I do think such an influence is at work, and I claim the condition in which I now find you as some justification for my belief.”
“You are quite mistaken,” said my host, “utterly mistaken.”