Sheard turned impulsively.
"Tell me you are in no way implicated in that ghastly crime!" he burst out. "Only tell me, and I shall be satisfied."
Séverac Bablon stepped quickly forward, grasped him by both shoulders and looked hard into his eyes with that strange, penetrating gaze that seemed to pierce through all pretence into the mind beyond.
"Sheard, in the pursuit of what I—and my poor wisdom may be no better than a wiser man's folly—of what I consider to be Nature's one law—Justice, I have braved the laws of man, risked my honour and my liberty. I have dared to hold the scales, to weigh in the balance some of the affairs of men. But life, be it that of the lowliest insect, of the vilest sinner against every code of mankind, is sacred. I—with all my egotism, with all my poor human vanity—would not dare to rob a fellow creature of that gift which only God can give, which only God may take back."
"Then——"
"You, who knew me, doubted?"
Sheard grasped the proffered hand.
"Forgive my fears," he said warmly; "I should have known. But this horrible thing has shaken me. I cannot survey murdered corpses with the calmly professional eye of the Sheffields and Harbornes."
"It was the work of an enemy, Sheard. There are men labouring, even now, piecing a false chain together, link by link; searching, spying, toiling in the dark to prove that the robber, the incendiary, the iconoclast, is also a murderer. I have need of all my friends to-night."
With a weary gesture, almost pathetic, he ran his fingers through his black hair. The shaded light struck greenly venomous sparks from his ring.