"Yes, my charming landlady, yes," replied Devlin, "A large pot of your exquisite tea. Fly!" "Make it, Fanny, and bring it up," I said. She flew, and returned with the steaming pot. Surely never was tea so quickly prepared before. The pot, milk, sugar, and two cups and saucers were on a tray, which, without raising her eyes, she placed before me. "Here, here," cried Devlin, tapping the table. "Before _me_, my dear creature! _I_ am the host on this occasion." She slid the tray over to him, and he made a motion as if he were about to place his hand on her. "If you lay a finger on me," she exclaimed, beating a hasty retreat from the table, "I'll scream the house down!" "Leave the room," I said sternly; "and call us at seven in the morning." "We shall be here, my dear creature," added Devlin. "You will find both of us safe and sound, ready to do justice to your excellent cooking. I have a premonition of a fine appetite for breakfast; cook me an extra rasher." I saw in Fanny's eyes a desire to say a word to me alone. Devlin saw it too. "Humour her," he said, and quoted a line from a comedy. "What is the use of a friend if you can't make a stranger of him?" I followed Fanny into the passage. "You've quite made up your mind, sir?" "Quite, Fanny." "Take this, sir," she said, pushing a hard substance into my hands. "If anything happens in the night, spring it." It was a policeman's rattle. "I don't know where Lemon got it from," she said, "but we've had it in the house for years." "Pshaw, Fanny!" I said, forcing the rattle back into her hands. "You are too ridiculous!" Yet when I was once again face to face with Devlin, with the door locked, I could not help thinking that I was acting a perilous part in putting myself, as it were, into his power. He might kill me while I slept. I determined to keep awake, and to lie down in my clothes. "Have some tea?" he asked. "Thank you," I replied. The tea would assist me in my resolve not to sleep. The teapot being emptied, I lit the cigar Devlin had given me. "I owe you an explanation," he said, puffing the smoke from his cigar into a series of circles. "I take it as a fact that Lemon is suffering from some kind of prophetic vision in connection with the murder of Lizzie Melladew in Victoria Park on Friday night." "It is so," I said. "Part of my explanation lies in the admission that he received that forewarning from me." "Then you knew it was done," I cried. "I did not know it. It passed through the mind of a customer whose hair I was dressing. I do not call that knowing a thing. I am something of a thought-reader, my dear sir, and I possess a certain power, under suitable conditions, of conveying my impressions to another person. That is the extent of my explanation. Excuse me for making it so brief."