"So," he mused, "as long as the paper was in my possession, my life was safe, for you must watch me to find it.
Therefore I was not poisoned or stabbed or shot at during your original ten days of service.

Later, even though you could not lay your own hands upon the paper, things began to happen.

Knowing what I did, I had lived too long as it was." "Yes." "Suppose you begin at the beginning--and tell me just what you know." It was a halting, nervous tale poorly told.

Carl, with his fastidious respect for a careful array of facts, found it trying.

By a word here or a sentence there, he twisted the mass of imperfect information into conformity and pieced it out with knowledge of his own.
"So," said he coldly, "you thought to stab me the night of the storm and stabbed Poynter.