“You know something!” he cried. “Tell me!”
I shook my head, opened the door, and the old servant, getting out, went waddling off across the street, her dress flapping in the wet wind.
“Come, Mr. Chauffeur!” I said to him. “ You are to spend the night with me. To-morrow—”
“To-morrow?”
“Exactly,” said I brusquely.
“And what then?”
“To-morrow I shall search for truth lying hidden among blades of grass!” said I. “In the mean time all the sleep I can pile into you may count more than you know!”
I had spoken with a note of authority because each moment I feared that he would become stubborn. I feared that, taking offense at my theories, he would reject my services and plunge into some folly at the moment when a most delicate balance between good and evil, life and death, safety and danger, might be overthrown on the side of terrible calamity. I was thankful when he once more showed himself tractable by climbing on the driver’s seat and turning our course homeward. It was the small hours of morning that found me under the lamp in my study, giving the distracted young man a narcotic. When his head was nodding, he struggled once to open his eyes.
“I don’t understand—anything—blades of grass—or anything,” he asserted sleepily, as I closed his door.
Exhaustion had brought its childlike petulance, but I knew that drowsiness would do its work, and that he was now safely stowed away for at least ten hours. He would not interfere with my plans before noon.