"I am going to take you away from here—down to my home in the country,"
I said. "Do you think you can stand the journey?"
"Whether I can or not makes no difference," he answered. "I shall never be allowed to leave this room alive."
The Britisher in me was touched.
"Rubbish," I answered, "if you talk like that, I shall go to Scotland Yard at once. I tell you frankly, I don't like your nurse. I don't like your doctor, I don't like their shutting you up in this lonely part of the hotel, and I can't understand the attitude of Mr. Blumentein at all. He must know what he is risking in attempting this sort of thing, in London of all places in the world."
He interrupted me impatiently.
"Don't talk about Scotland Yard," he said. "These people are not fools.
They would have a perfect answer to any charge you might bring."
"You don't mean that you intend to lie here and be done to death?" I protested.
"Death for me is a certain thing," he answered. "I have been a doomed man for months. There was never a chance for me after I entered the portals of this hotel. I knew that; but I backed my luck. I thought that I might have had time to finish my work—to lay the match to the gunpowder."
"Listen," I said, "there is a lady—a young lady staying here, a Miss Van
Hoyt."
"Well?"