“But why on earth didn’t you tell me at the time?” said Professor Goodman, peering at the speaker suspiciously.
Once again the other laughed.
“My dear fellow, surely Mrs. Goodman must, during the course of your married life, have let you into the secret of one of your characteristics. Or has she been too tactful? You are, as I think you must admit yourself, a little obstinate, aren’t you?” He dropped his tone of light banter, and became serious. “I don’t think—in fact, I know you don’t realise the deadly peril you were in. Even had I succeeded in convincing you on the matter, and you had agreed to come away and hide yourself, you would not have consented to the destruction of your laboratory. And that was essential. As long as Peterson thought you were alive he would have found you wherever you had hidden yourself. It was therefore of vital importance that he should think you dead—as he does now. Big issues, my dear Professor, require big treatments.”
Mr. Robinson, having delivered himself of this profound utterance, leaned back in his chair and gazed at his listener. Bland assurance radiated from his mutton-chop whiskers, but his mind was busy. How was the old fool taking it? He still had his trump card to play, but he wanted that to win the game without possibility of failure. And as his mental metaphors grew a little mixed, he realised that it must fall on carefully prepared soil.
Professor Goodman stirred uneasily in his chair.
“I really can hardly believe all this,” he said at length. “Why is all this deception necessary? Why have I to pose as your brother? And why, above all, have you tortured me?”
“Let me answer your last point first if I can,” said Mr. Robinson. “And yet I can’t. Even if I can persuade you to forgive me, I never shall be able to forgive myself. Sudden anger, Professor, makes men do strange things—dreadful things. And I was furious with rage when I found that you had deliberately failed in the experiment. I realise now that I should have explained everything to you to start with. But I suppose my hatred of Peterson and my wish for revenge blinded me to other things. Everything, as I have told you, is subservient to that in my mind. Bringing you here, making you pose as my brother—what was all that done for except to throw that devil off the scent should he by any chance suspect? And at present he does not. He believes that the secret for which he would have given untold gold has perished with you. He is angry, naturally, at what he considers a buffet of fate, but that is no use to me as a revenge. He must know that it was not fate—but I who wrecked his scheme. He must know that not only has he lost the secret forever—but that I have got it. There will be my revenge for which I have waited twenty years.” His eyes glistened, and he shook his fists in the air. “And then and not till then will it be safe for you to go back and join your wife.”
Professor Goodman leapt from his chair.
“You mean that?” he cried. “You will let me go?”
Mr. Robinson gazed at him in pained surprise; then he bowed his head.
“I deserve it,” he said in a low voice. “I deserve your bad opinion of me, firstly for not having told you, but especially for my vile and inexcusable loss of temper. But surely you can never have believed I was going to keep you here for good. Why”—he gave a little pained laugh—“it’s almost as if you thought I was a murderer. Foolish I may have been, obsessed with one idea, but I never thought that you would think quite as badly of me as that. After all, believe me or not as you like, I saved your life.”
He rose from his chair and paced thoughtfully up and down the room.
“No, no, my dear fellow—please reassure yourself on that point. The very instant it is safe for you to do so, you shall return to your wife.”
“But when will it be safe?” cried the Professor excitedly.
“When Peterson knows that your secret is in my possession, and that therefore murdering you will avail him nothing,” answered Mr. Robinson calmly.
“But how do I know you will keep your word?”
“You don’t,” said the other frankly. “You’ve got to trust me. At the same time I beg of you to use your common sense. Of what possible advantage is it to me to keep you here? I shall have to trust you to take no steps to incriminate me, and that I am fully prepared to do. My quarrel is not with you, Professor; nor is it with that young man Drummond. But quite by accident he got between me and my life’s object—and he had to be removed. So is it fair to Mrs. Goodman to keep her in this dreadful sorrow for one moment longer than is necessary? The very instant you have given me your secret, and your word of honour that you will say nothing to the police, you have my word of honour that you are free to go.”
“But what do you propose to do with my secret when you’ve got it?” asked the Professor. He was watching his captor with troubled eyes, wondering what to believe.
“Do with it?” cried the other exultantly. “I propose to seek out Peterson and let him know that I have got what he has missed. And if you but knew the man, you would realise that no more wonderful revenge could be thought of.”
“Yes, yes—I see all that,” said the Professor irritably. “But in the event of my giving the secret to the world—what then?”
Mr. Robinson curbed a
