"I see that it will enable her to pay her father out of his theft debt, and by that means to purchase her own freedom," I rejoined. Then I added: "But I can't surround the miraculous part of it, Bonteck. In fact, I'm afraid I shall have to see and handle the gold again before I can be sure I'm not dreaming—as Madeleine said we all three were. There are too many impossibilities."
He was silent for a full minute before he said: "Yes, there are impossibilities—a good few of them. And yet there are not so many as there appeared to be." Another pause, and then: "Dick, I've had the shock of my life."
"I can believe it," I said; "so had I. But just what do you mean?"
Once more he seemed to be trying to shape things in his mind so that they should issue in some sort of orderly array.
"I'll tell you presently: that is why I wanted to get you by yourself. But there is something else that has to be told first. As I say, I've put it off as long as I can. You will want to tie a stone around my neck and heave me into the sea when you've heard what I have to say, and I shan't blame you. As the thing has turned out, I'm a cold-blooded assassin—no less."
"Open confession is good for the soul," I commented, but even as I spoke, all the surmises and half-suspicions that had been troubling me for days and weeks came tumbling in to make a mental chaos where there should have been calm judgment and a fair weighing of motives.
"To begin at the beginning, then," he went on doggedly. "So far as I knew at the time, there was no mutiny on board the Andromeda. It was a plant from start to finish. I had two objects in view. The first and craziest was the notion that I handed you that night at dinner in New Orleans—the notion of cutting out a little bunch of people from the world—my world—and making them pull off their masks. It was a barbarous idea; a crudely savage one, if you like; only I couldn't see that side of it. I meant to make it a sort of unexpected picnic, providing carefully against all of the real hardships, but at the same time letting the shock do what it might towards the unmasking."
"I am trying to give you what credit I can for the carefully planned ameliorations," I said. "But that doesn't excuse your appallingly selfish motive. Go on. It was all prearranged with Goff, I take it?"
"Thoughtfully prearranged. And the motive wasn't wholly selfish, as you will find out a little farther along. Goff was to steer for this island, the longitude and latitude of which, as I told you, I had obtained from the captain of the tramp steamer that rescued you and the other survivors of the Mary Jane, and at the critical moment there was to be a fake mutiny and a real marooning. It was by my instructions that Goff didn't appear in the marooning mix-up. I wanted him to be able to show a clean bill of health when the play was over. He was to pick his men for the mutiny demonstration and the marooning job, leaving the marooned ones to infer that he, and the handful of Americans in the engine-room and fire-hold, had been overpowered."
Again I said, "Go on," and tried to hold judgment in suspense until after the evidence should all be in.