THE GUNSHOT WOUND AGAIN
231
ening you at all—either with Baraka or with anything else."
"Then that is only another of the circumstances of the case which you wish to have plain to me."
"Yes; that is the second."
"Is there a third?"
"The third concerns the effect of your course of action upon myself."
"Upon yourself?"
"You understand that, in this consideration, it makes no difference what your motives were in regard to the emerald. Even if I assumed them to be the most ignoble possible—if I believed, like Baraka, that it was to keep the control of my property in your hands—still, you were one of my father's closest and most devoted agents; you have performed your duties toward myself faith-
