ee, the fire was timed to break out before you left
your entertainment, as it would have done if you'd seen the programme
through. Tell your people that Mr. Nettleton's away for the night, and
you've gone and locked yourself out by mistake. Above all, don't come
back, unless you want to give the whole show away; he'd know at once
that you'd discovered everything, and even your life wouldn't be safe
for another minute. Unless you promise, Sarah, I'll just wait for him
myself--with a policeman!"

My reasoning was cogent enough for that simple mind; on the other hand,
the word of such an obviously faithful soul was better than the bond of
most; and altogether it was with considerable satisfaction that I heard
old Sarah trot off into the night, and then myself ran every yard of the
way back to the Delavoyes' house.

Up to this point, as I still think, I had done better than many might
have done in my place. But for my promise to Uvo, and the fact that he
was even then lying waiting for me to redeem it, I would not have rushed
to a sick man with my tale. Yet I must say that I was thankful I had no
other choice, as matters stood. And I will even own that I had formed no
definite plans beyond the point at which Uvo, having heard all, was to
give me the benefit of his sound judgment in any definite dilemma.

To my sorrow he took the whole thing in an absolutely different way from
any that I had anticipated. He took it terribly to heart. I had entirely
forgotten the gist of our conversation before I left him; he had been
thinking of nothing else. The thing that I had expected to thrill him to
the marrow, that would have done nothing else at any other time, simply
harrowed him after what it seemed that I had said three-quarters of an
hour before. Whatever I had said was overlaid in my mind, for the
moment, by all that I had since seen and heard. But Uvo Delavoye might
have been brooding over every syllable.

"You said you wouldn't envy me," he cried, huskily, "if poor old
Nettleton fell under the influence in his turn. You spoke as if it was
_my_ influence; it isn't, but it may be that I'm a sort of medium for
its transmission! Sole agent, eh, Gilly? My God, that's an awful
thought, but you gave it me just now and I sha'n't get shot of it in a
hurry! None of these beastly things happened before _I_ came here--I,
the legitimate son of this infernal soil! I'm the lightning-conductor,
I'm the middleman in every deal!"

"My dear