“I suppose so,” answered Agar apprehensively.
“Then I am going to tell you something which you must swear by all that you hold most sacred to keep a strict secret until such time as I give you leave to reveal it.”
Arthur looked at him with a vague fear in his face. It seemed suddenly as if this man had always been in his life—as if he would never go out of it again.
“I am not sure that I care to hear it,” he wavered.
“You must hear it. Almost the last words that Jem Agar spoke to me were requesting me to tell you this.”
“You promise that that is true?”
Arthur was surprised at his own suspicions. It was so unlike him, whose nature, too weak to compass vice, had never allowed the suspicion of vice or deceit in others to trouble him.
“I promise,” replied Seymour Michael.
Arthur gathered himself together for an effort. His distrust of this man was almost a panic.
“Then tell me,” he said.