Wenk believed he had come on the Countess’s errand, and that something had happened in the prison to put an end to the enterprise they had in hand. “I think, Count Told, that after all it was too risky an experiment. The Countess....” “No, no,” cried Told, interrupting him. “I ... I ... it is on my own account that I’ve come here,” and then he began his story. He told, too, what an extraordinary sensation of heat he had felt at the back of his head, and this must have been the forerunner of misfortune. “Do not be vexed, Dr. Wenk, that I, a stranger, should come to you thus, but I should have had to put an end to myself if I had not been able to confide in someone to-night. May I go on? Well, these powerful rays, that were like red-hot iron at the back of my head, changed gradually to a feeling of well-being throughout my whole body. They seemed to bathe me in pleasant warmth, and I had a feeling that I was somehow saved from something that lay before me, and in this very moment of relief ... it happened! In the first half-hour afterwards I denied that it could have done, but when I reached home I realized that the dreadful story was true, and this thing had really happened. There is no getting away from it, either for others or for myself.” Wenk at once recalled his experience with the old Professor. He was startled. Could it be possible that here too ... and he thought of the Countess and of Cara Carozza. He asked Told, “Have you any suspicion at all?” The Count did not understand the question. “Any suspicion? What do you mean? That I have been like this before? Ill in this way? No, never!” “No, a suspicion of any special person who was there?” “The idea never occurred to me. I can’t understand how anybody else could.... No ... I don’t suspect anyone!” “Was there nobody in the company who did not seem to belong there, who was not quite like the other guests?” “It was a company of the Privy Councillor’s intimate friends. No, there was nobody!” Wenk rejected the idea. Besides, how could there be any connection between the criminal he was seeking and the Count’s act of cheating? It was apparently a momentary mental aberration, a loss of will-power. A subconscious process in a strange and elusive personality which bordered upon morbidity, which thus strove to register a mental impression upon its fellow-players. The Count ought to consult a psychiatrist. It was extraordinary that he should appeal to him, a criminal prosecutor, but he did not put any question to him on this head.