Mr. John P. Dunster let his cigar burn out. He looked steadfastly at this strange little figure whose chair had imperceptibly moved a little nearer to his. “You know what the withholding of this message you carry may mean,” Mr. Fentolin proceeded. “You come here, bearing to Europe the word of a great people, a people whose voice is powerful enough even to still the gathering furies. I have read your ciphered message. It is what I feared. It is my will, mine--Miles Fentolin’s--that that message be not delivered.” “I wonder,” Mr. Dunster muttered under his breath, “whether you are in earnest.” “In your heart,” Mr. Fentolin told him, “you know that I am. I can see the truth in your face. Now, for the first time, you begin to understand.” “To a certain extent,” Mr. Dunster admitted. “Where I am still in the dark, however, is why you should expect that I should become your confederate. It is true that by holding me up and obstructing my message, you may bring about the evil you seek, but unless that word is cabled back to New York, and my senders believe that my message has been delivered, there can be no certainty. What has been trusted to me as the safest means of transmission, might, in an emergency, be committed to a cable.” “Excellent reasoning,” Fentolin agreed. “For the very reasons you name that word will be given.” Mr. Dunster’s face was momentarily troubled. There was something in the still, cold emphasis of this man’s voice which made him shiver. “Do you think,” Mr. Fentolin went on, “that I spend a great fortune buying the secrets of the world, that I live from day to day with the risk of ignominious detection always hovering about me--do you think that I do this and am yet unprepared to run the final risks of life and death? Have you ever talked with a murderer, Mr. Dunster? Has curiosity ever taken you within the walls of Sing Sing? Have you sat within the cell of a doomed man and felt the thrill of his touch, of his close presence? Well, I will not ask you those questions. I will simply tell you that you are talking to one now.” Mr. Dunster had forgotten his extinct cigar. He found it difficult to remove his eyes from Mr. Fentolin’s face. He was half fascinated, half stirred with a vague, mysterious fear. Underneath these wild words ran always that hard note of truth. “You seem to be in earnest,” he muttered. “I am,” Mr. Fentolin assured him quietly. “I have more than once been instrumental in bringing about the death of those who have crossed my purposes. I plead guilty to the weakness of Nero. Suffering and death are things of joy to me. There!” “I am not sure,” Mr. Dunster said slowly, “that I ought not to wring your neck.” Mr. Fentolin smiled. His chair receded an inch or two. There was never a time when his expression had seemed more seraphic. “There is no emergency of that sort,” he remarked, “for which I am not prepared.”