“Why, on the island of Elba.  I’m curious, you know, especially in the matter of criminals, so I came—­oh, a tremendous way—­to have a look at Napoleon Bonaparte, there.  Now I’ll tell you another thing, he’s going to escape in a month or two, when his plans are ready.  I had that from his own lips; and, what’s more, I heard it again in Paris a week later.  From Paris I came across to London, and from London down to Plymouth, and from Plymouth I was to have travelled straight to Falmouth, to take my passage home, when I heard of what had happened here, and that the house was for sale.  So I stopped to have a look at it; for I am curious, I tell you.”

He went on to prove his curiosity by asking me a score of questions about myself:  my age, my choice of a profession, my relatives (I told him I had none), and my schooling.  He drew me (I cannot remember how) into a description of Plinny, and agreed with me that she must be a woman in a thousand; asked where she lived at present, and regretted—­pulling out his watch—­that he had not time to make her acquaintance.  Oddly enough, I felt when he said it that this was no idle speech, but that only time prevented him from walking up the hill and paying his respects.  I felt also, the longer we talked, I will not say a fear of him, for his manner was too urbane to permit it, but an increasing respect.  Crazed he might be, as his questions were disconnected and now and again bewildering, as when he asked if my father had travelled much abroad, and again it I really preferred to remain idle at home instead of returning to finish my education with Mr. Stimcoe; but his manner of asking compelled an answer.  I could not tell myself if I liked or disliked the man, he differed so entirely from any one I had ever seen in my life.  His questions were intimate, yet without offence.  I answered them all, with a sense of talking to some one either immensely old or divided from me by hundreds of miles.

In the midst of our talk, and while he was pressing me with questions about Mr. and Mrs. Stimcoe, he suddenly lifted his head, and stood listening.

“Hallo!” said he.  “Here’s the coach!”

I had heard nothing, though my ears are pretty sharp.  But sure enough, though not until a couple of minutes had passed, the wheels of the Highflyer, our evening coach to Plymouth, sounded far along the road.

The stranger pulled out a bunch of keys from his pocket.

“I will ask you as a favour,” said he, “to return these to the lodge-keeper, from whom I borrowed them.  Will you be so kind?”

I said that I would do so with pleasure.

“I have been over the house.  It appears—­the lodge-keeper tells me—­ that I have been almost the only visitor to inspect it.  That’s queer, for I should have thought that to an amateur in crime—­ with a taste for discovery—­it offered great possibilities.  But never mind, child,” said this strange man, and shook hands.  “I have great hopes of finding the scoundrel, and of dealing with him.  Eh?  ‘How?’ Well, if we get him upon an island, he shan’t get away, like Napoleon.”