“Is it you, Sainclair? What is it, my friend?”
“I wanted to know what you could be doing here at such an hour?” I replied, and it seemed to me that my voice was that of another man, so great was my terror.
Tranquilly, he struck a match and said:
“You see. I am preparing for bed.”
And he lit a candle which was placed on a chair, for there was no night stand in this dilapidated apartment. A bed in one corner—an iron bed which must have been brought there during the day, and a single chair, comprised all the furnishings.
“I thought that you were going to sleep near Mme. Darzac and the Professor on the first floor of ‘la Louve’?”
“The rooms are too small. I was afraid of inconveniencing Mme. Darzac,” answered the unhappy man, bitterly. “I asked Bernier to fetch me a bed here. And then what difference does it make where I am, since I do not sleep?”
We were both silent for a moment. I was ashamed of myself and of my wretched suspicions. And, frankly, my remorse was so great that I could not refrain from giving it expression. I confessed everything to him; my infamous ideas and how I had even believed when I saw him wandering so mysteriously over the New Castle that it was upon some evil errand; and so had decided to go and look for the “Australia” birthmark. For I did not conceal from him that for a moment, I had placed all my hopes upon the Australia.
He listened to me with such an expression of reproachful sorrow that it wrung my heart; then he quietly rolled up his shirt sleeve and bringing his bare arm close to the light, he showed me the birthmark, which made a sane man of me once more. I did not wish to look at it, but he even insisted upon my touching it and I knew beyond a doubt that it was a natural scar upon which one might place little dots with the names of the cities, “Sydney,” “Melbourne,” “Adelaide.” And beneath it there was another little blotch shaped like Tasmania.
“You may rub it as much as you choose,” said Darzac, gently, “It will not come off.”