to have any dim
suspicion of the truth. By God! I'd kill anybody, even you, who told
her. She's not to know. She must never know." In his sudden fit of
passion he sprang to his feet and towered over me with clenched
fists,--the sputtering flames casting a weird Brocken shadow on wall and
ceiling of the fog-darkened room--I shrank into my chair, for he seemed
not a man but one of the primal forces of nature. He shouted in the same
deep, shaken voice.

"Adrian is dead. The child is dead. But the book lives. You understand."
His great fist touched my face. "The book lives. You have seen it."

"Very well," said I, "I've seen it."

"You swear you've seen it?"

"Yes," said I, in some bewilderment.

He turned away, passed his hand over his forehead and through his hair,
and walked for a little about the room.

"I'm sorry, Hilary, old chap, to have lost control of myself. It's a
matter of life and death. I'm all right now. But you understand clearly
what I mean?"

"Certainly. I'm to swear that I saw the manuscript. I'm to lend myself
to a pious fraud. That's all right for the present. But it can't last
forever."

Jaffery thrust both hands in his pockets and bent and fixed the steel of
his eyes on me. I should not like to be Jaffery's enemy.

"It can. And it's going to. I'll see to that."

"What do you mean?" I asked. "There's no book. We can't conjure
something out of nothing."

"There is a book, damn you," he roared fiercely, "and you've seen it,
and I've got it. And I'm responsible for it. And what the hell does it
matter to you what becomes of it?"

"Very well," said I. "If you insist, I can wash my hands of the whole
matter. I saw a completed manuscript. You are my co-executor and
trustee. You took it away. That's all I know. Will that do for you?"

"Yes. And I'll give you a receipt. Whatever happens, you're not
responsible. I can burn the damned thing if I like. Do anything I
choose. But you've seen the outside of it."

He went to the writing table by the gloomy window and scribbled a
memorandum and duplicate, which we both signed. Each pocketed a copy.
Then he turned on me.

"I needn't mention that you're not going to give a hint to a human soul
of what you have seen this day?"

I faced him and looked into his eyes. "What do you take me for? But
you're forgetting. . . . There is one human soul who must know."

He was silent for a minute or two. Then, with his great-hearted smile:

"You and Barbara