“Well,” I said at length. “Now be frank with me, Jack, old fellow; what does all this mean? Why did you leave the country so suddenly and cause all this talk?”
“What has been said about me? Have the papers got hold of it?” he inquired quickly.
“Not to my knowledge.”
“Thank Heaven!” he gasped, with a sigh of relief. “Then I am safe up to the present.”
Up to the present! He feared the future. This was a confession of his guilt! The fingers that held his cigar trembled slightly as he spoke.
“But you have not told me the reason of your flight. What is it you fear?” I inquired.
“The reason is a secret,” he said, as if speaking to himself, looking away fixedly across the meadows and the sun-illumined river. “Some incidents have occurred that, although they have happened in real life, are even more startling and extraordinary than any I have ever imagined in fiction.”
“Cannot you explain them to me, your friend?”
“No. I cannot—I—I dare not, believe me. For the present I must preserve my secret,” and he shook his head sadly.
“Why?”