He smiled pityingly upon me.
"I am beginning to think, my friend," he said, "that you are not so clever as I at first supposed you. I wonder what you would say if I were to tell you, that while Valerie was playing for Schuncke's entertainment, I, who was travelling along between Prague and Dresden, was an interested spectator of the whole scene. Shall I describe to you the arrangement of the room? Shall I tell you how Schuncke leant against the wall near the door, his hands folded before him, and his great head nodding? How you sat at the table near the fireplace, building castles in the air, upon which, by the way, I offer you my felicitations? while Valerie, standing on the other side of the room, made music for you all? It is strange that I should know all that, particularly as I did not do myself the honour of calling at the restaurant, is it not?"
I made no answer. To tell the truth, I did not know what to say. Pharos chuckled as he observed my embarrassment.
"You will learn wisdom before I have done with you," he continued. "However, that is enough on the subject just now. Let us talk about something else. There is much to be done to-night, and I shall require your assistance."
The variety of emotions to which I had been subjected that day had exercised such an effect upon me that, by this time, I was scarcely capable of even a show of resistance. In my own mind I felt morally certain that when he said there was much to do he meant the accomplishment of some new villainy, but what form it was destined to take I neither knew nor cared. He had got me so completely under his influence by this time that he could make me do exactly as he required.
"What is it you are going to do?" I inquired, more because I saw that he expected me to say something than for any other reason.
"I am going to get us all out of this place and back to England without loss of time," he answered, in a tone of triumph.
"To England?" I replied, and the hideous mockery of his speech made me laugh aloud; as bitter a laugh surely as was ever uttered by mortal man. "You accused me just now of not being as clever as you had at first supposed me. I return the compliment. You have evidently not heard that every route into England is blocked."
"No route is ever blocked to me," he answered. "I leave for London at midnight to-night, and Valerie accompanies me."
"You must be mad to think of such a thing!" I cried, Valerie's name producing a sudden change in my behaviour toward him. "How can she possibly do so? Remember how ill she is. It would be little short of murder to move her."