What is the use of waxing wroth with this jester? I reply calmly:
“No, sir. I have not given up hope, and I still expect that I shall be released.”
“What! Mr. Hart, separate ourselves from a man whom we all esteem—and I from a colleague who perhaps, in the course of Thomas Roch’s fits of delirium, has learned some of his secrets? You are not serious!”
So this is why they are keeping me a prisoner in Back Cup! They suppose that I am in part familiar with Roch’s invention, and they hope to force me to tell what I know if Thomas Roch refuses to give up his secret. This is the reason why I was kidnapped with him, and why I have not been accommodated with an involuntary plunge in the lagoon with a stone fastened to my neck. I see it all now, and it is just as well to know it.
“Very serious,” I affirm, in response to the last remark of my interlocutor.
“Well,” he continues, “if I had the honor to be Simon Hart, the engineer, I should reason as follows: ‘Given, on the one hand, the personality of Ker Karraje, the reasons which incited him to select such a mysterious retreat as this cavern, the necessity of the said cavern being kept from any attempt to discover it, not only in the interest of the Count d’Artigas, but in that of his companions—’“
“Of his accomplices, if you please.”
“‘Of his accomplices,’ then—’and on the other hand, given the fact that I know the real name of the Count d’Artigas and in what mysterious safe he keeps his riches—’“
“Riches stolen, and stained with blood, Mr. Serko.”
“‘Riches stolen and stained with blood,’ if you like—’I ought to understand that this question of liberty cannot be settled in accordance with my desires.’“