“You certainly hit him pretty hard, Doctor,” said Wilmot, after he’d looked at me for some time. “Well, Mr. Gaunt—been happy and comfortable?”
“You devil,” I burst out, and then, maddened by his mocking smile, I cursed and raved at him till I was out of breath.
“Quite finished?” he remarked when I stopped. “I’m in no particular hurry, and as I can easily understand a slight feeling of annoyance on your part, please don’t mind me. Say it all over again if it comforts you in any way.”
“What do you want?” I said, almost choking with sullen rage.
“Ah! that’s better. Will you have a cigar? No. Then you won’t mind if I do. The time has come, Mr. Gaunt,” he went on, when it was drawing to his satisfaction, “when you must make a little return for the kindness we have shown you in keeping you alive. For a while I was undecided as to whether I would dispose of you like your lamented confrère Mr. Ganton, but finally I determined to keep you with us.”
“So Ganton is dead,” I said. “You murdered him that night.”
“Yes,” he agreed. “As you say, I killed him that night. I have a few little fads, Mr. Gaunt, and one of them is a dislike to the word murder. It’s so coarse and crude. Well—to return, Mr. Ganton’s sphere of usefulness as far as I was concerned was over the moment he had afforded me the pleasure of meeting you. But for the necessity of his doing that, he would have—er—disappeared far sooner. He had very kindly paid a considerable sum of money to acquire an airship, and as I wanted the airship and not Mr. Ganton, the inference is obvious. You’ve no idea, Mr. Gaunt, how enormously it simplifies matters when you can get other people to pay for what you want yourself.”
I found myself staring at him speechlessly: in comparison with this cold, deadly suavity Helias seemed merely a coarse, despicable bully.
“In addition to that,” he went on quietly, “the late Mr. Ganton presented me with an idea. And ideas are my stock-in-trade. For twenty years now I have lived by turning ideas into deeds, and though I have accumulated a modest pittance I have not yet got enough to retire on. I trust that with the help of Mr. Ganton’s idea—elaborated somewhat naturally by me—I shall be able to spend my declining years in the comfort to which I consider myself entitled.”
“I don’t understand what you’re talking about,” I muttered stupidly.
“It is hardly likely that you would at this stage of the proceedings,” he continued. “It is also quite unnecessary that you should. But I like everyone with whom I work to take an intelligent interest in the proceedings. And the thought that your labours during the next few weeks will help to provide me with my pension should prove a great incentive to you. In addition you must remember that it will also repay a little of the debt you owe to Doctor Helias for his unremitting care of you during your period of convalescence.”
“For God’s sake, don’t go on mocking,” I cried. “What is it you want me to do?”
“First, you will move from here to other quarters which have been got ready for you. Not quite so comfortable, perhaps, but I trust they will do. Then you will take in hand the manufacture of your poison on a large scale, a task for which you are peculiarly fitted. A plant has been installed which may perhaps need a little alteration under your expert eye: anything of that sort will be attended to at once. You have only to ask.”
“But what do you want the poison for?” I asked.
“That, as Mr. Gilbert once said—or was it Mr. Sullivan?—is just like the flowers that bloom in the spring, tra-la-la. It has nothing to do with the case. In time you will know, Mr. Gaunt: until then, you won’t.”
“Is it for a foreign country?” I demanded.
He smiled. “It is for me, Mr. Gaunt, and I am cosmopolitan. But you need have no fears on that score. I am aware of the charming ideal that actuated you and Mr. Ganton, but, believe me, my dear young friend, there’s no money in it.”
“It was never a question of money,” I cried.
“I know.” His voice was almost pained. “That is what struck me as being so incredible about it all. And that is where my elaboration comes in. Now there is money in it: very big money if things work out as I have every reason to hope they will.”
“And what if I refuse?” I said.
He studied the ash on the end of his cigar.
“In the course of the twenty years I have already mentioned, Mr. Gaunt,” he said, “I wouldn’t like to say how many people have made that remark to me. And the answer has become monotonous with repetition. Latterly one of your celebrated politicians has given me an alternative reply, which I will now give to you. Wait and see. We’ve been very kind to you, Gaunt, up to date. You gave me a lot of trouble over that box of antidote which you hid in the cellar”—how my heart sank at that—“though I realise that it was partially my fault—in not remembering sooner that you had it in your pocket. In fact, I had to dispose of an eminent savant, Sir John Dallas, in order to get hold of it.”
“Then the authorities got it?” I almost shouted.
“Only to lose it again, I regret to say. By the way,” he leaned forward suddenly in his chair—“do you know a man called Drummond—Captain Hugh Drummond?”
From beside me as I read, Drummond heaved a deep sigh of joy.
“It is Peterson,” he said. “That proves it. Go on, Stockton.”
“Hugh Drummond! No, I’ve never heard of the man. But do you mean to say you murdered Sir John?”
“Dear me! That word again. I keep on forgetting that you have been
