“Tell me,” I said, passing a tremulous hand over my throbbing forehead, “what has happened? Have you had a serious accident here while I have been in this cell?”
“No,” he said, with a grave shake of his head; “nothing has occurred here—nothing at all.”
“Did something hit me, or was I all of a sudden stricken with a fit.”
“Neither,” he replied; “all through you have been a free and a conscious agent.”
“Then, I didn’t dream! I didn’t rave! I have actually seen the things I have pictured?” I stammered, thoroughly bewildered by the man’s steady and truthful gaze. “Oh! I have it,” I cried suddenly again, “you have hypnotised me! You made me believe that I was first at the foot of a mountain in far-off Africa then on the snowclad wastes of Canada, and afterwards in a noble throne-room in Spain, where an offer was made that tempted me most sorely.”
“That is not so,” he answered coldly. “I am not a hypnotist! I do not understand mesmerism, and, if I did, I wouldn’t practise it. I consider it is based on a malign perversion of some beneficent law of Nature.
“No,” he went on, reaching out a hand and turning up the light that hung above his head; “there has been no occult influence at work here—none at all. All that you have seen has happened, fairly enough, but with this distinction—it has all happened round about this room.
“As a matter of fact, you must always remember this,” he proceeded, “the founder of our order, the Bruno Delganni, had a most marvellous knowledge of stage mechanics and effects, and when he found it so hard to discover whether the men who wished to join him were really patriots or not he turned this knowledge to the use you have seen. He erected in every monastery that he established huge theatrical machinery and properties, with the result that the brethren there are able to carry out any kind of test they wish.
“In your case, the plan agreed on was a very simple but an effective one. The first idea was to give you a fright, and then to take you off on all manner of excursions, so that you would not realise when the supreme test came what and which it was. Hence the deaths on the mountain and in the snowstorm. The real trial came when we played with all the force we could on the one string we knew held you like a vice—your love of manuscripts. Would you respond to this and renounce your birthright, or not?
“Luckily, you did not, although we bent every energy we had, every trick we knew, to lure you into the trap, using hasheesh, chloroform, anything that suited our purpose, to make our stage scenes seem to you the more vital, the more real. In the end you made the supreme refusal—you would not cease to be an Englishman. Therefore all our show ended as suddenly as it had begun. We had tested you, and we had found you were really the patriot you had always pretended to be to José Casteno when any question arose of the safety or the use of those three manuscripts that gave the whereabouts of the Lake of Sacred Treasure.