“For me,” Grey confessed. “Now you can understand why I didn’t care to talk in the café.”
O’Hara dropped into a chair.
“This is very interesting,” he said, and his blue eyes twinkled.
Grey, his hands in his trousers’ pockets, was standing before the chimney-piece. His expression was very grave.
“I suppose,” he began, “that you think me rather a blackguard. Appearances so far are against me, aren’t they? By my own admission I’m here under an assumed name trying to evade the minions of the law, who are hot-foot on my trail. Everything you thought you knew about me I have informed you is false. Therefore you are not likely to be predisposed in my favour. Consequently the story I’m going to tell you now you’ll probably not believe. I’m free to admit that if the situation were reversed I wouldn’t believe you; and yet—I—well, I wouldn’t have taken you into my confidence if it were not that I’m sure you’re a gentleman—an honest, high-principled, Irish gentleman who loves right and is willing to fight for it.”
O’Hara smiled encouragingly.
“Drive ahead, my boy,” he urged; “the jury is absolutely unprejudiced.”
Then Grey plunged into a detailed narrative of that surprising day. He told of his strange awakening and parenthetically gave his hearer an idea of his position at home and a glimpse of his previous life. He rehearsed his conversation with Frothingham; he repeated word for word the cables he had sent to New York; he summarized the articles he had read in the Herald; he described the passing of Herr Schlippenbach and recited his death-bed communication, and finally he gave, as nearly as he could remember it, the conversation between Lutz and Johann.
O’Hara listened with rapt interest, interrupting him now and then with a question, at times smiling understandingly and at others scowling at what he regarded as evidence of importance against the little group by which Grey was surrounded. At the conclusion of the recital he sprang up and impulsively grasped the American’s hand.
“You’ll come out on top yet, boy,” he cried, “and it’s John James O’Hara that’ll help to put you there. I’ve heard of such cases as this before. They’ve been drugging you, lad, that’s as plain as the nose on my face, and your dear uncle, Herr Schlippenbach, do you mind, has been the chief drugger. It was because he was too ill to do his work that the effects wore off. Now that he’s gone they’re worried to death over you. Sure, you’re not so blind that you can’t see that yourself.”