He was silent for a moment as if reflecting; and then looking all around, as if to ascertain that we were alone, he whispered:
"You will never reveal to any one what I am going to tell you?"
"It will not be within my power to reveal anything after you have finished with me," I replied with a smile that was the essence of ghastliness.
"True, true; I am forgetting that."
Taking up the stained poniard, he bent forward in his chair and whispered between his white teeth:
"You see this red stain? His! It is a twelvemonth old—a twelvemonth this very night."
Making a stab at an imaginary figure, he looked at me, and said: "Wait. I'll show you how I did it presently."
"I am quite willing to wait." My trembling lips could scarcely frame the words. "Let me have the whole story—every word. I shall not mind if you take hours over it."
"You shall have the whole story. Oh, you shall not lose a syllable of it! Ho! ho! it was a master-stroke of craft. Was Borgia or Macchiavelli ever more cunning? I glory in the deed. I love to dwell on it. I act it every night. In the secrecy of my chamber, in the quietness of the picture-gallery, I rehearse the whole tableau of that glorious time. They would not permit me to do this in the day-time, you know," he said, exchanging his excited manner for one that was quite grave and confidential. "They would call me mad: they would take me away—far away from my studio and my easel, and they would put me in a padded room, and I should paint no more. But I am too cunning for them," he cried, his eyes lighting up once more with the fire of madness. "I baffled them. They know not that in the still hours, while they sleep, I am occupied in the work of killing Captain Willard. He takes a deal of killing, too!" he added, resuming as if by magic his quiet air again. "Each night I slay him; yet each night he returns again, clamouring for the death-stroke. I would not believe it if I did not see it for myself. Strange, is it not?" he concluded, turning to me.
"It's extraordinary!" my white lips gasped. Which, if it were true, it most certainly was.