have done it quite successfully if he had not been mated
with a coward and a skunk, and that he didn't much care now what came of
him, since he didn't suppose they would let him loose and give him one
hour's chance again, and see if he couldn't work the thing somewhat
better than he had had a chance of doing before. If he had not trusted
too long to the courage and nerve of his comrade it would have been all
right, he said. His only remorse seemed to be in that self-accusation.

Sarrasin recovered consciousness in a few hours. As his plucky wife
said, it took a good deal to kill him. His story was clear. The
Sicilian--the Saffron Hill Sicilian--came into his room and tried to
kill him. Of course the Sicilian believed that he was trying to kill
Ericson. Sarrasin easily disarmed this pitiful assassin, and then came
the explosion. Sarrasin was perfectly clear in his mind that the
Sicilian had nothing to do with the explosion--that it was made from
without, and not from within the door. His own theory was clear from the
beginning, and was in perfect harmony with the theory which the Dictator
had formed at the time of the abortive attempt at assassination in St.
James's Park. Then a miserable stabber of the class familiar to every
South Italian or South American town was hired at a good price to do a
vulgar job which, if it only succeeded, would satisfy easily and cheaply
the business of those who hired the murderer. The scheme failed, and
something more subtle had to be sought. The something more subtle,
according to Sarrasin, was found in the rehiring of the same creature to
do a deed which he was told would be made quite easy for him--the
smuggling him into the house to do the deed; and then the surrounding of
the deed with conditions which would at the same moment make him seem
the sole actor in the deed, and destroy at once his life and his
evidence. The real assassins, Sarrasin felt assured, had no doubt that
their hireling would get a fair way on the road to his business of
assassination, and then a well-timed dynamite cartridge would make sure
his work, and would make sure also that he never could appear in
evidence against the men who had set him on.

Thus it was that Sarrasin reasoned out the case from the first moment of
his returning senses, and to this theory he held. But one of the first
painful sensations in Sarrasin's mind--when he realised, appreciated,
and enjoyed the fact that he was still alive--that his