"I am attending."
"By the hold over my sister's imagination which I have gained, I will kill her on the fourth morning from now."
"You will—not."
"I tell you I will," Brande shrieked, starting up in his berth. "I could do it now."
"You could—not."
"Man, do you know what you are saying? You to bandy words with me! A clod-brained fool to dare a man of science! Man of science forsooth! Your men of science are to me as brain-benumbed, as brain-bereft, as that fly which I crush—thus!"
The buzzing insect was indeed dead. But I was something more than a fly. At last I was on a fair field with this scientific magician or madman. And on a fair field I was not afraid of him.
"You are agitating yourself unnecessarily and injuriously," I said in my best professional manner. "And if you persist in doing so you will make my one month three."
In a voice of undisguised scorn, Brande exclaimed, without noticing my interruption:
"Bearded by a creature whose little mind is to me like the open page of a book to read when the humour seizes me." Then with a fierce glance at me he cried: