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Conniston chuckled gleefully. "Another joke, Roger, my boy! I wonder when the Fates are going to drop us in order to give their undivided attention to some other lucky mortals? You know that twenty-seven dollars and sixty cents?" "Well?" "I've lost it!" Conniston laughed outright as his ready imagination depicted amusing complications ahead. "Every blamed cent of it!" "What!"
Tonight it was sufficient that HE was Conniston, and that to him the girl had fallen as a precious heritage. He stood up with her at last, holding her away from him a little so that he could look into her face wet with tears and shining with happiness.
Shan Tung had not expected him to seek safety in flight. He had given the white man credit for a larger understanding than that. His desire, first of all, had been to let Keith know that he was not the only one who was playing for big stakes, and that another, Shan Tung himself, was gambling a hazard of his own, and that the fraudulent Derwent Conniston was a trump card in that game.
He, too, is an engineer, and he, too, knows all there is to know about the work." She paused a moment, as though in hesitation. Conniston waited in silence for her to go on. "Father is sending you to the Valley because he has begun to take an interest in you. Before the year is over there is going to be an opportunity for every man there to show what there is in him.
To impress this upon Keith he had, first of all, acquainted him with the fact that he had seen through his deception and that he knew he was John Keith and not Derwent Conniston. He had also let him know that he believed he had killed the Englishman, a logical supposition under the circumstances. This information he had left for Keith was not in the form of an intimidation.
I would give a good deal to know the exact hour and date when the change in her began. I might be able to trace some event to that date. It was six months ago that she began to take an interest in the fate of John Keith. Since then the change in her has alarmed me, Conniston. I don't understand. She has betrayed nothing. But I have seen her dying by inches under my eyes.
He drew it out and let the firelight play on the open dial. It was ten o'clock. In the back of the premier half of the case Conniston had at some time or another pasted a picture. It must have been a long time ago, for the face was faded and indistinct. The eyes alone were undimmed, and in the flash of the fire they took on a living glow as they looked at Keith.
There was one thing left undone, one play Conniston would still make, if he were there. And he, too, would make it. It was no longer necessary for him to give himself up to McDowell, for Kao was dead, and Miriam Kirkstone was saved. It was still right and just for him to fight for his life. But Mary Josephine must know FROM HIM. It was the last square play he could make.
There were times when the contemplation of these things appalled him, and his mind turned to other channels of escape. And then always he heard Conniston's cool, fighting voice, and the red blood fired up in his veins, and he faced home. He was Derwent Conniston.
But the thing forced itself on him. It was reasonable, and it was justice. "But she won't do it," he told himself. "She won't do it." This was his fight, and its winning meant more to him than freedom. It was Mary Josephine who would live with him now, and not Conniston.
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