“I tell you a lie,” he answered at once. “It was just zat he might miss to hear of me--not guess the truce of the vengeance which arrives to him at last.” “He? Who?” I asked apprehensively. This matter was assuming a more sinister complexion than I quite liked. “I say, my friend, I hope your looks are belying you. You haven’t got a knife in your pocket, have you?” “Signore,” he said earnestly, almost piteously, “I beg zat you not force of me, your servant, to answer. For myself I will confess the truce that I lie. My name is Antonio Geoletti.” What chord of memory was suddenly touched in my brain? For a moment I could not identify it--and then, all in a flash, it had leapt upon me out of the dark. Geoletti! the name of the Italian guide mentioned in Charlie Skene’s letter! I looked at the man stupidly. Some dim association of ideas was already quickening, very little and deep, in my brain. It was the seed of a certain deductive reasoning--the stirring of a green shoot which, like the Indian juggler’s mango-tree, would push through the soil in a little and break into sudden leaf, and take my soul with knowledge. “Geoletti?” I exclaimed at last, in a voice sharp with astonishment. And then in one leap light came in, and the tree burst into flower. _It was Mark Dalston whom this avenger was tracking to his doom!_ He bowed sombrely. After a little pause I went nearer to him. Here was, as I have said, no coincidence; but the stupendousness of the destiny quite awed and humbled me. What was I worth, without this directing hand of Fate to guide me? “Geoletti,” I said, looking at him intensely, but speaking very quietly, “I think--perhaps--it may be--I can tell you something about yourself.” “Si, signore?” he answered as quietly, almost indifferently, for he can have had no apprehension of what was to come. “You were a guide, once upon a time, in the Italian Alps, were you not?” “Si, signore.” His eyelids flicked up swiftly, and were lowered again. His lips gasped a little. “You knew a Mr Cecil Delane there. He offended you somehow. It is to be revenged on him, under his proper name of Mark Dalston, that you are now come into this part of the country. Is not this all so?” I thought he would have fallen. He caught himself steady by the sofa end, and stood staring and gulping at me. “Now, wait,” I said. “You wonder how I can know this. The puzzle of Destiny makes a very simple map when it is put together, Geoletti. Some time ago I happened to come across part of a letter in a book. You were mentioned in it; Mr Dalston was mentioned in it, and one or two others. But leave them out. It was just the association of the two names, yours and his, then and now, that has made me jump to a conclusion. Wait while I show you.” I went and fetched the letter, and held it out under his eyes. “Can you read?” “Si--yes, yes.” “Read, then.”