"Very," I admitted. "Thanks." Evan smiled sarcastically. "Well, Arthur just imagined he heard the beast following him through the trees. He shot at nothing, when you and he went down to explore the village. My own 'encounter' with the animal when I started off in the jungle alone was purely imaginary. I scratched my own face and jabbered like the gorilla myself. Like this----" He emitted a succession of incredible sounds, so beastlike and ferocious in their tones that I could hardly believe it was not an animal uttering them. There was a peculiar echo from the bush outside. "The dogs were excited in the storeroom," Evan went on easily, "because they could smell the fur of the mask I kept in a small box in there. When I told that wild tale of a hairy arm reaching in at the window and dragging the dog out, to fling it with a broken neck into the courtyard, I need not say that I had done the killing. And my 'seeing' the gorilla on the roof was more fiction. Of course he wasn't there at dawn. I was laughing in my sleeve at you people all night long, while we patrolled the courtyard. The silhouette of the gorilla's head you two saw on the window curtain was the shadow of your humble servant. I had decided that the play had gone far enough. The presence of the gorilla had been proved. The three of you, my present audience, would corroborate my story of the gorilla's having killed Arthur. I was on my way to break his neck. You nearly got me that time, and I had to kill the dog to get away. Then the natives got out of hand. I could have stopped them by a simple appearance, but you people would have missed me. I waited until they were near the house, then rushed out in my mask, snarling and raging at them, and they ran. After that I hid the mask quickly and pretended to you that I had been knocked down. It was really very simple. With the natives quieted for a few days, I simply carried out my plans to dispose of Arthur. I'm sorry I'll have to put you two out of the way, but Arthur's dead, I'm his heir, I'm going to marry Alicia and become a country gentleman in England, and I can't let you two people talk." "You'll never dare take me to England," said Alicia, desperately white. "You'll marry me, Alicia," said Evan coolly. "You won't split. When you see the preparations my natives will make for the entertainment of Murray and Mrs. Braymore, you'll swear to anything, and you'll marry me when we get to Ticao. You'll corroborate my tales of a slave uprising, too. You don't know what can be done to Murray, and will be done before he dies, unless you do as I say." Alicia moistened her lips. I saw her half close her eyes.