"You've been listening," I said, "you and your servant here."
"I have been listening, Sir Thomas Kirby, that's true. I have every
right to. When a man breaks into my house without my knowledge and makes
clandestine love to my daughter, he's not the person to accuse one of
eavesdropping. As for my servant there, you do me an injustice, which I
find harder to forgive than anything, when you suggest that I allowed
him to overhear what passed in this room just now. He was not at his
post until Juanita had been gone from here some seconds. Mulligan, you
can go now. Sir Thomas, please come with me into the library."
There was something so magnetic about this strange and compelling
personality that I followed him without a word.
"Then you knew," I asked in a husky voice, "you knew all the time?"
He smiled.
"Yes," he said, "I arranged a little comedy. The faithful Mulligan was
not drugged at all, and I did everything to facilitate your entrance."
"Then that treacherous cur, Pu-Yi, was playing with me the whole time!
And yet I could have sworn that he was genuine. When I meet him--"
"You will shake hands with him if you are a wise man. Pu-Yi was
absolutely genuine, but he, in common with my daughter, knew nothing of
the truth until you told it him. He had believed me a madman. Then he
understood not only the peril in which I was, and am, but also that of
my daughter. Do you think, Kirby, that I should have built these towers,
let imagination transcend itself, made myself the cynosure of Europe,
unless I was sure of what I was doing? Now, alas, you've told Juanita,
and brought terror into her life as well as mine."
"Sir," I said, "her relief is greater than any fear. I'll answer for
that."