The Red Hand
would return for the walk down Oxford Street. You did, by way of New Oxford Street, and I was waiting at the corner.'
'Your conclusions are admirable,' said Mr. Selby. 'I may tell you that I had my stroll down Oxford Street the night Sir Thomas Vivian died. And I think that is all I have to say.'
'Scarcely,' said Dyson. 'How about the treasure?'
'I had rather we did not speak of that,' said Mr. Selby, with a whitening of the skin about the temples.
'Oh, nonsense, sir, we are not blackmailers. Besides, you know you are in our power.'
'Then, as you put it like that, Mr. Dyson, I must tell you I returned to the place. I went on a little farther than before.'
The man stopped short; his mouth began to twitch, his lips moved apart, and he drew in quick breaths, sobbing.
'Well, well,' said Dyson, 'I dare say you have done comfortably.'
'Comfortably,' Selby went on, constraining himself with an effort, 'yes, so comfortably that hell burns hot within me for ever. I only brought one thing away from that awful house within the hills; it was lying just beyond the spot where I found the flint knife.'
'Why did you not bring more?'
The whole bodily frame of the wretched man visibly shrank and wasted; his face grew yellow as tallow, and the sweat dropped from his brows. The spectacle was both revolting and terrible, and when the voice came, it sounded like the hissing of a snake.
'Because the keepers are still there, and I saw them,
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