What do you conceive to have been the cause of the extraordinary shock you felt and of the havoc you witnessed?
What, in short, the nature of the occurrence and the origin of the manuscript you entrust to my care ?" "Why need you ask me ?" he returned.

"You are as capable as myself of drawing a deduction from what I have told you, and I have told you everything, I believe, that could assist you.

The manuscript will tell the rest." "But," said I, "an actual eye-witness often receives from a number of little facts which he cannot remember, which are perhaps too minute to have been actually and individually noted by him, an impression which is more likely to be correct than any that could be formed by a stranger on the fullest cross-questioning, on the closest examination of what remains in the witness's memory.

I should like to hear, before opening the manuscript, what you believe to have been its origin.
"I can only say," he answered, "that what must be inferred from the manuscript is what I had inferred before I opened it.

That same explanation was the only one that ever occurred to me, even in the first night.