“Now note: You go up to him and ask him not to take photos. He shows first a startled resentment at your impudence, then a generous courtesy as proprietor for your interference on his behalf. Next, a sudden happy thought—how well you would look as part of the picture he was planning. He dresses you up, taking care to place you in a position in which you’ll trip and fall. Now he has the middle link in his chain. But you were merely a link. You see, his real plan is to get me down too. He could, you will admit, hardly have hoped to lure me to act as model for a sun worshipper. But put you in that role and then he might persuade me to get into the picture also. Then, when you went over backwards, you would pull me into the pond as well.”

“But,” I said, “we should have had no more than a bad wetting.”

“I see you are going to call for all my proofs before you will yield to the fact that we were really in the hands of a man as sane as all careful murderers are. You remember that charming little statuette which so took my fancy when we first visited the garden? It was of bronze. Not one of those cheap cement objects that people buy at the road-side and put in their gardens. It is a work of art, a museum-piece.”

“It had patinated very nicely,” I remarked, just to show I could talk objet d’art gossip as well as the master.

“I’m glad you observed that,” he replied. “Yes, bronze is a remarkable material and worthy of having a whole Age named after it. More remarkable, indeed, than iron, for though iron has a better edge, it won’t keep if constantly watered.”

“What are you driving at?” For now I was getting completely lost in the old spider’s spinning.

“That pretty little sham spear from which the water sprayed wasn’t sham at all. It was a real spear, or shall we say, a giant hollow-needle. Because it was bronze it would keep its point unrusted. The only effect the water would have—and that would add to its lethal efficacy—would be to give it a patina. Further, I feel sure from the long close look I was able to give when we were being posed for our plunge, the blade of the spear had been touched up with a little acetic acid. That would no doubt corrode the fine edge a little but would make it highly poisonous—though not to the life in the pool.”

“Why are you so interested in the pond-life?” I asked.