‘It is what I suggest,’ answered Rex. ‘And I bind myself voluntarily to silence.’
‘Very good. Will you continue your predictions? Will you tell me the cause of the danger?’
‘You and your family are threatened with great misfortune through the return of an evil person—a relation, I should fancy—who has been absent many years.’
Greif started at the directness of the assertion, and an exclamation of something like anger rose to his lips. But he remembered the compact he had just made.
‘Will he return?’ he asked in a voice which showed Rex that he was not mistaken.
‘Inevitably,’ answered the latter. ‘Therein consists the peculiarity of your situation. You are at the mercy of the inevitable. You cannot retard by one day the catastrophe, any more than you can prevent one of the planets from returning to a given point in its orbit. He will return—let me see—’
‘Can you tell me when?’ asked Greif, who for a moment had forgotten his scepticism.
Rex seemed to be making a calculation, and repeating it more than once in order to be sure of its accuracy.
‘In three months, more or less. Probably before Christmas. He is now at a great distance, in the south-west—’
‘It is impossible that you should guess so much!’ exclaimed Greif, rising in great excitement.