He looked at me reflectively; then said, in low, thoughtful tones, speaking, not to me, but entirely to himself:
“Suppose I shoot him?”
I saw in his eye, that if I flinched, he would draw the trigger.
“Suppose you trust me?” I said, without moving a muscle.
“I trusted you, as an honest man, downstairs, and I find you, like a thief, up here,” returned the doctor, with a self-satisfied smile at the neatness of his own retort. “No,” he continued, relapsing into soliloquy: “there is risk every way; but the least risk perhaps is to shoot him.”
“Wrong,” said I. “There are relations of mine who have a pecuniary interest in my life. I am the main condition of a contingent reversion in their favor. If I am missed, I shall be inquired after.” I have wondered since at my own coolness in the face of the doctor’s pistol; but my life depended on my keeping my self-possession, and the desperate nature of the situation lent me a desperate courage.
“How do I know you are not lying?” he asked.
“Have I not spoken the truth, hitherto?”
Those words made him hesitate. He lowered the pistol slowly to his side. I began to breathe freely.
“Trust me,” I repeated. “If you don’t believe I would hold my tongue about what I have seen here, for your sake, you may be certain that I would for—”