"So much the better," I answered, "for you will then be able to acquaint them with the circumstances I am about to reveal to you. Sir Edward, I must have a few moments' conversation with you alone. I have a confession to make to you--the most hideous tale to pour into your ears that ever man confided to another." Then, recollecting myself, I continued, "But it must not be here. It must be in the open air, or I shall infect you." He looked at me in a curious fashion. "You need have no fear on that score," he said. "I have had the plague, and have recovered from it. So far it has not been known to attack anyone twice. But since you wish to speak to me alone, come with me." With this he led me down the long passage to an office at the further end. Like the others this one was also deserted. Once inside he closed the door. "Be as brief as you can," he said, "for during this terribly trying period my time is not my own. What is it you wish to say to me?" "I wish to confess to you," I said, and my voice rang in my ears like a death knell, "that I am the cause of the misery under the weight of which England and Europe is groaning at the present time." Once more Sir Edward looked at me as he had done in the passage outside. "I am afraid I do not quite understand," he said, but this time in a somewhat different tone. "Do you mean that you wish me to believe that you, Cyril Forrester, are the cause of the plague which is decimating England in this terrible manner?" "I do," I answered, and then waited to hear what he would say. In reply he inquired whether I had suffered from the disease myself. "I was the first to have it," I answered. "My story is an extraordinary one, but I assure you every particular of it is true. I was inoculated with the virus while I was in Egypt--that is to say, in the Queen's Hall of the Great Pyramid of Gizeh. I afterward nearly died of it in an Arab tent out in the desert beyond Luxor. Later I was taken by a man, of whom I will tell you more presently, to Constantinople, thence through Austria and Germany, and finally was smuggled across the Channel into England." "And who was the man who inoculated you?" inquired the Home Secretary, still with the same peculiar intonation. "Can you remember his name?"