“A murmur of horror escaped my lips. In another instant my master had sprung across the room and had torn away the curtains from before me. ‘You here!’ he said. And for a few seconds I thought my fate would be the same as that of Mr. Osmond. But at last his hand dropped. ‘Janvard, you and I must be friends,’ he said. ‘From this night your interests are mine, and my interests are yours.’ Then we left the room together. A terrible night, monsieur, as you may well believe.” “You have accounted clearly enough for the murder, but you have not yet told us how it happened that Lionel Dering came to be accused of the crime.” “That is the worst part of the story, sir. Whose thought it was first, whether Mr. St. George’s or mine, to lay the murder at the door of Mr. Dering, I could not now tell you. It was a thought that seemed to come into the heads of both of us at the same moment. As monsieur knows, my master had no cause to love his cousin. He had every reason to hate him. Mr. Dering had got all the estates and property that ought to have been Mr. St. George’s. But if Mr. Dering were to die without children, the estate would all come back to his cousin. Reason enough for wishing Mr. Dering dead. “We did not talk much about it, my master and I. We understood one another without many words. There were certain things to be done which Mr. St. George had not the nerve to do. I had the nerve to do them, and I did them. It was I who put Mr. Dering’s stud under the bed. It was I who took his handkerchief, and——” “Enough!” said Lionel, with a shudder. “Surely no more devilish plot was ever hatched by Satan himself! You—you who sit so calmly there, had but to hold up your finger to save an innocent man from disgrace and death!” “What would monsieur have?” said Janvard, with another of his indescribable shrugs. “Mr. St. George was my master. I liked him, and I was, besides, to have a large sum of money given me to keep silence. Mr. Dering was a stranger to me. Voilà tout.” “Janvard, you are one of the vilest wretches that ever disgraced the name of man!” “Monsieur s’amuse.” “I shall at once proceed to put down in writing the heads of the confession which you have just made. You will sign the writing in question in the presence of Mr. Bristow as witness. You need be under no apprehension that any immediate harm will happen to you. As for Mr. St. George, I shall deal with him in my own time, and in my own way. There are, however, two points that I wish you to bear particularly in mind. Firstly, if, even by the vaguest hint, you dare to let Mr. St. George know that you have told me what you have told me to-night, it will be at your own proper peril, and you must be prepared to take the consequences that will immediately ensue. Secondly, you must hold yourself entirely at my service, and must come to me without delay whenever I may send for you, and wherever I may be. Do you clearly understand?” “Yes, sir. I understand.”