On the other side of Tokyo that night Doctor Bersonin sat with Phil in his great laboratory. Dinner had been laid on a round table at one end of the room. This was now pushed into a corner; they sat in deep leather chairs with slim liqueur glasses of green crême de menthe on a stand between them, with a methyl lamp and cigars.
Phil had more than once refilled his glass from the straw-braided, long-necked vessel at his elbow. He was restless and ill at ease. The tense excitement that had followed his hour with Bersonin at the Club had been allayed by the lights and movement of the cherry-festival; but in that cool, bare room, under the continuous, slow scrutiny of the expert's pallid, mask-like face, the sense of half-fearful elation had returned, reinforced by a feverish expectation.
During the dinner, served at ten, conversation had been desultory, full of lapses broken only by the plaintive chirp of the hiwa from its corner. When the cigars and cordial had been brought by the silent-footed Ishida, Bersonin had risen to draw the curtain closely over the window and to lock the door. When he came back he stood before the mantelpiece, his arm laid along it, looking down from his towering height on the other's unquiet hand playing with the chain of the spirit-lamp. His face was very white. Phil drew a long, slow breath and looked up.
Bersonin spoke. His voice was cold and measured; the only sign of agitation was in the slow, spasmodic working of the great white fingers against the dark wood.
"I have brought you here to-night," he said, "to make you a proposition. I have need of help—of a kind—that you can give me. It will require certain qualities which I think you possess—which we possess in common. I have chosen you because you have daring and because you are not troubled by what the coward calls conscience—that fool's name for fear!"
Phil touched his dry lips with his tongue. "I have as little of that as the next man," he replied. "I never found I needed much."
Bersonin continued:
"What I have to say I can say without misgiving. For if you told it before the fact there is possibly but one man in Japan who would think you sane; and if you told it after—well, for your own safety, you will not tell it then! Your acceptance of my proposition will have a definite effect on your prospects, which, I believe, can scarcely be looked on as bright."
Phil muttered an oath. "You needn't remind me of that," he said with surly emphasis. "I've got about as much prospects as a coolie stevedore. Well, what of it?"
The cold voice went on, and now it had gathered a sneer: