you went down to the coast on certain business, leaving the rascally
Dutchman behind. He was quite alone in the mine, there was no one within
miles of that secret spot. And yet he vanished. Van Fort was never heard
of again. The message of his fingers was conveyed to his wife, for she
was implicated in the murder of my father, and how she suffered you
already know. But you are a brave man--I give you all the credit for
that. You went back to the mine again, determined not to be deterred by
what had happened. What happened to you, I need not go into. Shall I tell
the story, or will you be content with a recollection of your sufferings?
It is all the same to me."

"You are a bold man," Fenwick cried. He was trembling with the rage that
filled him. "You are a bold man to defy me like this. Nobody knows that I
am here, nobody knows that you are back in your own house again. I could
kill you as you sit there, and not a soul would suffer for the crime."

The cripple laughed aloud; he seemed to be amused at something.

"Really!" he sneered. "Such cheap talk is wasted upon me. Besides, what
would you gain by so unnecessary a crime, and how much better off would
you be? You know as well as I do, disguise it as you will, that the long
arm has reached for you across five thousand miles of sea, and that,
when the time comes, you will be stricken down here in London as surely
and inevitably as if you had remained in Mexico under the shadow of the
mountains. The dreadful secret is known to a few, in its entirety it is
even unknown to me. I asked you just now if you had received the first
of your messages, and you denied that you knew what I meant. You
actually had the effrontery to deny it to me, sitting opposite to you as
I am, and looking straight at the dreadful disfigurement of your left
hand. For over three centuries the natives of Mexico worked the Four