"Excellent! Do you know, Sheard, these childish little conjuring tricks help me immensely! Can you picture Julius Rohscheimer cowering throughout a whole night before the rod of a trousers-stretcher projecting from a wardrobe door!"
"Was that the solution of the 'patriotic' mystery?"
"Certainly. Adeler, who was concealed in the wardrobe, armed with the necessary written threats, made his escape directly Rohscheimer's cheque was in his hand—leaving the rod to mount guard whilst you got the announcement into print and induced the Marquess to pay an early morning visit."
Séverac Bablon's handsome face looked almost boyish as he related how the financier had been forced to play the part of a patriot. Sheard, watching him, found new matter for wonderment.
This was the man who claimed to command the destinies of eight million people—the man who claimed to wield the power of a Solomon. This was Séverac Bablon, the most inscrutably mysterious being who had ever sown wonderment throughout the continents, the man who juggled with vast fortunes as Cinquevalli juggles with billiard-balls! This was the man whose great velvety eyes could gleam with uncanny force, whose will could enthrall hypnotically, for whom the police of the world searched, for whose apprehension huge rewards were offered, whose abode was unknown, whose accomplices were unnumbered, to whom no door was locked, from whose all-seeing gaze no secret was secret!
It was difficult, all but impossible, to realise.
"Yet I am he," said the melodious voice.
Sheard started as though a viper had touched him. He stared at his visitor in wide-eyed amazement.
"Heavens! Was I thinking aloud?"
"Practically. Your mind was so intensely concentrated upon certain incidents in my career—see, your pipe is out—that, in a broad sense, I could hear you thinking!"