'What do you propose to gain?'
'That's it.'
'Why do you conceal your identity?'
'I'm wondering.'
'If I bring the landlord into this room and tell him who you are, will you venture to deny it?'
'Depends on who I am.'
'I believe you're a criminal lunatic.'
'The same to you. And many of 'em.'
He sipped at his glass. He filled me with such rage--which was, after all, unreasonable rage--that I was unwilling to trust myself to speak. My impulse was to seize him by the scuff of his neck and drag him home with me, and show him to them all; when the question of his identity would be settled on the spot. However, I remembered in time that that was not the purpose which had brought me there. My intention was a very different one; and I proposed to carry it out. That is, if his humour fitted mine.
'Have you ever heard of the Marquis of Twickenham?'