“If it’s as you say, Mervyn, you are not responsible, but whether it is or not—or whether the chap was careless over handling the infernal machine, and so did for himself—and I don’t see why you shouldn’t give yourself the benefit of the doubt—the result’s the same, and a good one for you, in that we shouldn’t be here talking to-night, if he had lived another day. Had you any reason, by the way, to expect the attentions of this amiable confraternity?”
Mervyn knitted his brows and hesitated.
“Well, yes. I had,” he said at length. “I had received signs to put myself under its orders again. I had chucked it—clean, altogether—for years, in fact I thought that the very act of coming to this out of the way place would—well, blot out the trail. But I took no notice of them, and—this was the consequence. There’s no mistake about it, mind. I’ve no idea as to the man’s identity, but I recognised him, not at first, but the next morning, as one of those light coloured Afghans. He was Europeanised and talked English perfectly. Then, of course, I had the key to the whole situation.”
“Well, as I said, if he had lived, you would not have,” said the other.
“I’ve sometimes thought,” rejoined Mervyn, “and that’s the only thing that has bothered me—that is supposing I really did—you know—that after saving his life, he might have backed out of his errand.”
But Helston Varne shook his head slowly.
“I can’t presume to teach you your East, Mervyn. But—I think you are mistaken there.”
“Perhaps I am—most likely I am,” came the answer. “Anyway, Varne, I’m not going to stick on here any more, so if they plant another of those little reminders on me they’ll have to find out where I’ve got to.”
“They won’t,” said the other. “And when you’re in that jolly little cottage inside my park that you’ve promised me to inhabit, for—well, as long as it suits you—I think it’ll be a risky matter for any one to come fooling round you on that sort of errand.”
And then the two men talked on—on this topic and others—far into the night.