"Thanks, Karovsky; but I cannot accept a penny of the money you offer me."
"How! Not accept! But this is folly."
"It may seem so to you; but that does not alter the matter."
"It is unaccountable," said the Russian with a lifting of his black eyebrows. "But why remain in these wretched apartments? Why not go abroad--on the Continent--to America--anywhere? The world is wide, and there are places where you would be far safer than here."
"I doubt it One reason why I am here is because I believe this spot--in the heart of one of the most populous quarters of London--to be as safe a hiding-place as any I could find. My other reason is that were I to go abroad, I feel as if I should be throwing away my last faint hope of ever being able to prove my innocence to the world."
Karovsky stared at him in wide-eyed amazement. "How! Your"----
"My innocence of the murder of Baron von Rosenberg."
"Pardon; I fail to comprehend."
"When we parted last, I told you clearly and emphatically that, let the consequences to myself be whatever they might, mine should not be the hand to strike the fatal blow; but when you left me, you evidently did so in the belief that in a little while I should change my mind, and that of the two alternatives you had placed before me, I should choose the one which you yourself would in all probability have chosen had you been in my place. Time went on, and, within the period you had prescribed, Von Rosenberg was found dead, shot through the heart. Such being the case, it was perhaps a not unnatural conclusion for you to arrive at that it was I, Gerald Brooke, who was the assassin.--But I ask you, Karovsky, to believe in the truth of what I am now going to tell you. I had no more to do with the death of Von Rosenberg than you yourself had."
"Est-il possible!" exclaimed the Russian in a voice scarcely raised above a whisper. For a few moments he sat staring silently at Gerald; then he went on: "Not often am I astonished at anything I hear; but you, Gerald Brooke, have astonished me to-night The evidence against you seemed so conclusive, that I never doubted Von Rosenberg fell by your hand. Yet more than once I said to myself:'What an imbecile Brook must have been to leave behind him such a condemnatory piece of evidence as the weapon with which he did the deed!'--But who, then, was the individual who so kindly spared you a necessity so painful?"