You're right."
"Good God!" cried Harley. "Yet you remain silent!"
"Not so loud--not so loud!" implored Brinn, repeating that odd,
almost furtive glance around. "Mr. Harley--you know me. You've
heard of me and now you've met me. You know my place in the
world. Do you believe me when I say that from this moment onward
I don't trust my own servants? Nor my own friends?" He removed
his grip from Harley's shoulder. "Inanimate things look like
enemies. That mummy over yonder may have ears!"
"I'm afraid I don't altogether understand you."
"See here!"
Nicol Brinn crossed to a bureau, unlocked it, and while Harley
watched him curiously, sought among a number of press cuttings.
Presently he found the cutting for which he was looking. "This
was said," he explained, handing the slip to Harley, "at the
Players' Club in New York, after a big dinner in pre-dry days. It
was said in confidence. But some disguised reporter had got in
and it came out in print next morning. Read it."
Paul Harley accepted the cutting and read the following:
NICOL BRINN'S SECRET AMBITIONS
MILLIONAIRE SPORTSMAN WHO WANTS TO SHOOT
NIAGARA!
Mr. Nicol Brinn of Cincinnati, who is at present in New York,
opened his heart to members of the Players' Club last night. Our
prominent citizen, responding to a toast, "the distinguished
visitor," said:
"I'd like to live through months of midnight frozen in among the
polar ice; I'd like to cross Africa from east to west and get
lost in the middle.
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