"You've been listening," I said, "you and your servant here."
"I have been listening, Sir Thomas Kirby, that's true. I have every right to. When a man breaks into my house without my knowledge and makes clandestine love to my daughter, he's not the person to accuse one of eavesdropping. As for my servant there, you do me an injustice, which I find harder to forgive than anything, when you suggest that I allowed him to overhear what passed in this room just now. He was not at his post until Juanita had been gone from here some seconds. Mulligan, you can go now. Sir Thomas, please come with me into the library."
There was something so magnetic about this strange and compelling personality that I followed him without a word.
"Then you knew," I asked in a husky voice, "you knew all the time?"
He smiled.
"Yes," he said, "I arranged a little comedy. The faithful Mulligan was not drugged at all, and I did everything to facilitate your entrance."
"Then that treacherous cur, Pu-Yi, was playing with me the whole time! And yet I could have sworn that he was genuine. When I meet him—"
"You will shake hands with him if you are a wise man. Pu-Yi was absolutely genuine, but he, in common with my daughter, knew nothing of the truth until you told it him. He had believed me a madman. Then he understood not only the peril in which I was, and am, but also that of my daughter. Do you think, Kirby, that I should have built these towers, let imagination transcend itself, made myself the cynosure of Europe, unless I was sure of what I was doing? Now, alas, you've told Juanita, and brought terror into her life as well as mine."
"Sir," I said, "her relief is greater than any fear. I'll answer for that."
I faced him fair and square.