“For a blind man,” ventured one, “the assault was both deft and certain.  Are you accustomed to Mr. Hasbrouck’s house, that you found your way with so little difficulty to his bedroom?”

“I am accustomed—­” he began.

But here his wife broke in with irrepressible passion: 

“He is not accustomed to that house.  He has never been beyond the first floor.  Why, why do you question him?  Do you not see—­”

His hand was on her lips.

“Hush!” he commanded.  “You know my skill in moving about a house; how I sometimes deceive those who do not know me into believing that I can see, by the readiness with which I avoid obstacles and find my way even in strange and untried scenes.  Do not try to make them think I am not in my right mind, or you will drive me into the very condition you attribute to me.”

His face, rigid, cold, and set, looked like that of a mask.  Hers, drawn with horror and filled with question that was fast taking the form of doubt, bespoke an awful tragedy from which more than one of us recoiled.

“Can you shoot a man dead without seeing him?” asked the Superintendent, with painful effort.

“Give me a pistol and I will show you,” was the quick reply.

A low cry came from the wife.  In a drawer near to every one of us there lay a pistol, but no one moved to take it out.  There was a look in the doctor’s eye which made us fear to trust him with a pistol just then.

“We will accept your assurance that you possess a skill beyond that of most men,” returned the Superintendent.  And beckoning me forward, he whispered:  “This is a case for the doctors and not for the police.  Remove him quietly, and notify Dr. Southyard of what I say.”

But Dr. Zabriskie, who seemed to have an almost supernatural acuteness of hearing, gave a violent start at this, and spoke up for the first time with real passion in his voice: 

“No, no, I pray you.  I can bear anything but that.  Remember, gentlemen, that I am blind; that I cannot see who is about me; that my life would be a torture if I felt myself surrounded by spies watching to catch some evidence of madness in me.  Rather conviction at once, death, dishonour, and obloquy.  These I have incurred.  These I have brought upon myself by crime, but not this worse fate—­oh! not this worse fate.”

His passion was so intense and yet so confined within the bounds of decorum, that we felt strangely impressed by it.  Only the wife stood transfixed, with the dread growing in her heart, till her white, waxen visage seemed even more terrible to contemplate than his passion-distorted one.

“It is not strange that my wife thinks me demented,” the doctor continued, as if afraid of the silence that answered him.  “But it is your business to discriminate, and you should know a sane man when you see him.”

Inspector D—­ no longer hesitated.

“Very well,” said he, “give me the least proof that your assertions are true, and we will lay your case before the prosecuting attorney.”