Page:The Teeth of the Tiger - Leblanc - 1914.djvu/487

 that occurred to him and left her to herself. An hour later he came and knocked at her door.

This time again he had not the courage at once to ask her the question which he had made up his mind to put to her. Besides, there were other points which he wished to clear up.

"Florence," he said, "before I hand over that man, I should like to know what he was to you."

"A friend, an unhappy friend, for whom I felt pity," she declared. "I find it difficult to-day to understand my compassion for such a monster. But, some years ago, when I first met him, I became attached to him because of his wretchedness, his physical weakness, and all the symptoms of death which he bore upon him even then. He had the opportunity of doing me a few services; and, though he led a hidden life, which worried me in certain respects, he gradually and without my knowing it acquired a considerable influence over me.

"I believed in his insight, in his will, in his absolute devotion; and, when the Mornington case started, it was he, as I now realize, who guided my actions and, later, those of Gaston Sauverand. It was he who compelled me to practise lying and deceit, persuading me that he was working for Marie Fauville's safety. It was he who inspired us with such suspicion of yourself and who taught us to be so silent, where he and his affairs were concerned, that Gaston Sauverand did not even dare mention him in his interview with you.

"I don't know how I can have been so blind. But it was so. Nothing opened my eyes. Nothing made me suspect for a moment that harmless, ailing creature, who spent half his life in hospitals or nursing-homes, who