suspicious eye upon his master. His retreating footstep presently was heard dying away in the hall outside.
"Well, what do you think of that damned little Cuban?” Defoe asked the Voice. “I wonder what made him lie so brazenly?”
There was no response. Defoe repeated his second question.
Still silence answered him.
“Have you gone, my friend?” Defoe asked, turning part way in his chair to test the other’s watchfulness. This time no automatic punched his head and no command wilted him into the depths of his chair again.
Still doubtful of his good luck, Defoe called out once more:
“I say, stranger, have you gone?”
The only sound that greeted his ears was the faint creaking of a window in the adjoining dining-room. Defoe rose and darted to the connecting door, snapping on the electric light at the entrance to the dining-room.
The room was vacant of any soul but himself.
All he could see was the slight movement of the lace curtain at the dining-room window—and when he examined the window he found it latched.
III.
THE NEXT day Defoe went to his doctor. He wished to take stock of himself; perhaps he had been applying himself too closely to his business.
“You are badly run down, Allen,” the physican said, almost before he had sat down with his patient. “You look mentally distressed.”
“I am,” admitted Defoe. “Working too hard. I guess.”
The doctor eyed him keenly.
“Anything else troubling you?” he asked.
Defoe insisted there really was nothing at all beside his work that was affecting him. So the doctor gave the usual diagnosis: Too much nerve tension, not enough sleep, not the proper kinds of food. He ended by advising more rest and quiet.
“And avoid excitement, too.” he warned. “That old heart palpitation might crop up again, you know.”
It was all very well for the doctor to advise more rest and more sleep, but how was a man to sleep beneath a Damocles sword of mystery, of weird forebodings?
It was three weeks before Defoe felt that he was succeeding in obeying the doctor's instructions, partly, at least. Then—.
It happened late one night. Defoe lay in bed, his back to the lighted electric lamp on the table: he had fallen asleep, reading. Suddenly he stirred at a touch on his shoulder.
“That you, Manuel?” he asked, drowsily. “All right, put out the li—”
“No, it is not Manuel—and don’t bother to turn around, Defoe!” this last sharply, as Defoe made a movement to arise in bed.
“You again!” Defoe exclaimed. “What—how did you get in?”
“That’s my problem, not yours,” said the Voice. “I merely dropped in again to inquire if you had thought any more of doing what I suggested.”
Defoe checked an insane desire to leap out of bed and make a break for the door—anything to escape this tormentor at his back! But he remembered the automatic. . . .
He got himself under a semblance of control before he answered:
“Your suggestions were ridiculous. Why should I have anything to confess about the Bland trial, or why should I commit suicide over it?” He even essayed a laugh meant to be derisive.
But the intruder chose to ignore Defoe’s evasions. His next remark was as startling as it was illuminating:
“Did you know,” said the Voice, “that of the other eleven jurors who convicted Bland, only seven are living—still?”
“No; I haven’t kept track of the other eleven men,” replied Defoe, annoyed subconsciously by the detachment that the Voice gave to the word “still.”
“Well, I have,” said the Voice. “Two of the surviving seven are in insane asylums; two of the four dead committed sui—.”
