There and then I set to work and told him all that had happened to me since my arrival in London; informed him of my meeting with Nikola, of Wetherell's hasty departure for Australia, of my distrust for Baxter, described the telegram incident and Baxter's curious behaviour afterwards, narrated my subsequent meeting with the two men in the Green Sailor Hotel, described my journey to Plymouth, and finished with the catastrophe that had happened to me there.
"Now you see," I said in conclusion, "why I regard myself as being so much to blame."
"Excuse me," he answered, "but I cannot say that I see it in the same light at all."
"I'm afraid I must be more explicit then. In the first place you must understand that, without a shadow of a doubt, Baxter was chosen for your tutor by Nikola, whose agent he undoubtedly is, for a specific purpose. Now what do you think that purpose was? You don't know? To induce your father to let you travel, to be sure. You ask why they should want you to travel? We'll come to that directly. Their plan is succeeding admirably, when I come upon the scene and, like the great blundering idiot I am, must needs set to work unconsciously to assist them in their nefarious designs. Your father eventually consents, and it is arranged that you shall set off for Australia at once. Then it is discovered that I am going to leave in the same boat. This does not suit Nikola's plans at all, so he determines to prevent my sailing with you. By a happy chance he is unsuccessful, and I follow and join the boat in Naples. Good gracious! I see something else now."
"What is that?"
"Simply this. I could not help thinking at the time that your bout of sea-sickness between Naples and this infernal place was extraordinary. Well, if I'm not very much mistaken, you were physicked, and it was Baxter's doing."
"But why?"
"Ah! That's yet to be discovered. But you may bet your bottom dollar it was some part of their devilish conspiracy. I'm as certain of that as that we are here now. Now here's another point. Do you remember my running out of the Casino last night? Well, that was because I saw Nikola standing in the roadway."
"Are you certain? How could he have got here? And what could his reasons be for watching us?"
"Why, can't you see? To find out how his plot is succeeding, to be sure."