He nodded slowly. "Every bit of it, and more besides that. I'm deeply involved with the firm; that was my chief reason for trying to get hold of that girl, for with her I could have stopped all tongues wagging, and could have paid Hockley off. It was when I saw you, hot-headed and hot-blooded, and only too eager to quarrel with the man, that the idea came into my mind that I might use you. That--and the story I heard." I remembered in a flash the story the doctor had told at that dinner party at the house of old Patton; of the man who worked on the jealous feelings of another that he might kill a third man. But my mind moved slowly, and even yet I did not even quite see what this man had done. "I can tell you this now, because you're a dead man to all intents and purposes," said Jervis Fanshawe, leaning across the table and looking hard at me. "I always hated you--hated you, I think, for your youth and your strength, and that fair boyish face of yours that gave you a chance with women I never had. You've served my purpose, and in a way I never expected." "Then, when they bring me to justice--when they try me for what I have done," I said slowly and patiently, "that is the story you will tell them?" "Undoubtedly," he replied. "And you cannot contradict it." "I would not contradict it if I could prove the truth to every one," I assured him earnestly. "And I thank you from the bottom of my heart." He stared at me in amazement. "Are you mad?" he gasped. I shook my head, and smiled. "No, I'm not mad," I replied. "Only this gives me the chance I never hoped to get--the chance to keep her name out of it. I was afraid you might drag that in, tell of the quarrel between Hockley and myself, and have sharp lawyers turning and twisting that lie this way and that. Tell your tale, by all means; I shall keep silent. Now give me something to eat; I'm faint and worn out." I do not think he had understood me before; I caught him more than once stopping, as he moved about the room, to look back at me, and to ponder over me and to shake his head. I was indifferent to everything; I only thought how wonderfully it had all come about, that Barbara's name would never be mentioned; I had not hoped to kill the lie so completely as this. I ate the food he gave me, and presently lay down on the hard horsehair sofa in his sitting-room, and was fast asleep in a minute. I only woke once during the night, and then I found him bending over me with a flaring candle held above his head; there was still that wondering awestruck look in his face.