"You are taking me to some secret apartment, Doctor. I will go with you, but this trap must be left open, and I warn you that I am armed."
"You need no weapons, Mr. Barnes. No danger will threaten you. My purpose in taking you below is entirely different from what you have in your mind."
At the foot of the stairway he turned aside from the crypt of Æsculapius, and led the way into the secret chamber in which the hypnotic suggestion of love had been put into operation. At this time it appeared simply as an ordinary room, the staging and curtains having been removed.
"Be seated, Mr. Barnes," said the Doctor, "and listen to me. You are laboring under a misapprehension, or else you have not told me all that you know. A most curious suspicion has been aroused in your mind. Upon what facts is it based?"
"Perhaps it will be best for me to explain. I must again refer to the fact that your first wife was supposed to have died of diphtheria. Your second wife falls a victim to the same malady. It is uncommon in adults. This of itself might be but a coincidence. But when I know that, on a given day, I revealed to your wife the truth about Leon, which you had carefully hidden from her for so many years, and when I subsequently discover that Madame was attacked by this disease on the very night following her visit to my office, suspicion was inevitable."
"As you insist upon going back to that old case, let me ask you how you can suppose that I induced the disease at that time?"
"Just as you have done now. By using the diphtheria bacillus."
"You forget, or you do not know, that the bacillus of diphtheria was not discovered until Klebs found it in 1883, and the fact was not known until Löffler published it in 1884. Now my wife died in 1873."
"True, these scientists made their discoveries at the time which you name, but I feel certain that you had anticipated them. You are counted the most skilful man of the day, and I believe that you know more than has been learned by others."
"Your compliment is a doubtful one. But I will not dispute with you. I will grant, for the sake of argument, that your suspicion is natural. You cannot proceed against me merely upon suspicion. At least you should not do so."