"You seem to forget that I have escaped you," said Banks.
Wigmore nodded. "I made the mistake of underestimating your bodily strength," he admitted. "I don't understand even now, how you managed to get out of that closet. You couldn't kick down the door—even with those boots."
"Never mind about that!" exclaimed Jim Harley, white with excitement. "Tell me about the cards! What do you know about the cards?"
The old man gazed at him for a second or two with a face of derisive inquiry, and then burst again into furious laughter.
"Absolutely cracked," said Doctor Nash. "Absolutely, utterly, hopelessly off his chump!"
Wigmore ceased his wild laughter so suddenly that every one was startled.
"Jim," he said, with a bland leer, "you are so simple and unsuspecting that I hate to tell you the truth. But I have to do it, Jim, just to prove to Banks and the rest that I am not insane. Jim, my boy, I am the chosen instrument of Fate."
A brief, puzzled silence followed, which was broken by the croaking voice of old Timothy Fletcher.
"Forget it!" snarled Timothy. "D'you mind the time you was the Sultan of Turkey?"
Wigmore smiled at his servant, then glanced around the room, and tapped his forehead suggestively with a finger.