Henry looked neither surprised nor grateful. "I told you that I was not going to let myself be bailed out," he said with some impatience. "Now that they have shut me up in here, they at least can't accuse me of the next thing that happens."
"Oh, I see! Well, if you have the nerve for it, I am not sure that isn't a good plan," said Burton thoughtfully. "It will certainly eliminate you as a factor, if anything more does happen. Of course if the person who seems bent on implicating you should be shrewd enough to keep quiet for a while, it would not have the effect you wish for. Have you thought of that possibility?"
"I'm out of it," said Henry shortly. "That's all I care about. And here I am going to stay until they get tired and let me out to get rid of me."
"I am really very glad you can take that attitude," said Burton. He spoke sincerely, for the young man's manner contained no personal offence in spite of his brusqueness, and Burton was the least vain of men. "It leaves us free to work on the outside,--and of course you understand that I am going to work for you. Now, I want your help so far as you can give it to me. I want to know if you have any idea who is at the bottom of these occurrences,--any knowledge or any suspicion."
"No."
"Of course you must have given a good deal of thought to it, in the course of all these years. You have never had a glimmering of an idea as to who it is that is persecuting you?"
Henry smiled sardonically. "My mother says it is no persecution,--merely the punishment for my evil temper. I suppose you have heard that I have an evil temper?"
"Yes. It gave me a fellow-feeling for you. I have an evil temper myself, at bottom. But as for punishment, what I want to get at is the human agency. It seems incredible that you should have never, in your own mind, had a suspicion of the guilty party."
"What I may have thought in my own mind is neither here nor there," said Henry, knitting his black brows together.
"Have you an enemy, then?"