He burst out laughing—laughed heartily, and with genuine amusement.
His attitude held me in surprise.
"You refuse to be my friend, Royle—but I desire to be yours, if you will allow me," he said.
"I can have no friend whom I cannot trust," I repeated.
"Naturally. But I hope you will soon learn to trust me," was his quiet retort. "I called you back to-night in order to see if you—my most intimate friend—would recognise me. But you do not. I am, therefore, safe—safe to go forth and perform a certain mission which it is imperative that I should perform."
"You are fooling me," I declared.
For a second he looked straight and unflinchingly into my eyes, then with a sudden movement he drew the left cuff of his dress shirt up to the elbow and held out his forearm for me to gaze upon.
I looked.
Then I stood dumbfounded, for half-way up the forearm, on the inside, was the cicatrice of an old knife wound which long ago, he had told me, had been made by an Indian in South America who had attempted to kill him, and whom he had shot in self-defence.
"You believe me now?" he asked, in a voice scarce above a whisper.