“Wait a little,” I said. “You have got the door locked—you see I don’t move—you see my hands are empty. Wait a little. I have something more to say.”
“You have said enough,” he replied, with a sudden composure so unnatural and so ghastly that it tried my nerves as no outbreak of violence could have tried them. “I want one moment for my own thoughts, if you please. Do you guess what I am thinking about?”
“Perhaps I do.”
“I am thinking,” he remarked quietly, “whether I shall add to the disorder in this room by scattering your brains about the fireplace.”
If I had moved at that moment, I saw in his face that he would have done it.
“I advise you to read two lines of writing which I have about me,” I rejoined, “before you finally decide that question.”
The proposal appeared to excite his curiosity. He nodded his head. I took Pesca’s acknowledgment of the receipt of my letter out of my pocket-book, handed it to him at arm’s length, and returned to my former position in front of the fireplace.
He read the lines aloud: “Your letter is received. If I don’t hear from you before the time you mention, I will break the seal when the clock strikes.”
Another man in his position would have needed some explanation of those words—the Count felt no such necessity. One reading of the note showed him the precaution that I had taken as plainly as if he had been present at the time when I adopted it. The expression of his face changed on the instant, and his hand came out of the drawer empty.
“I don’t lock up my drawer, Mr. Hartright,” he said, “and I don’t say that I may not scatter your brains about the fireplace yet. But I am a just man even to my enemy, and I will acknowledge beforehand that they are cleverer brains than I thought them. Come to the point, sir! You want something of me?”