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"I cannot tell you, Miss Maxon," he said sadly, "how much I should hate to be the one to ignore your father's commands, and enlighten you upon this and other subjects which lie nearer to your personal welfare than you can possibly guess; but I feel that after the horrors of this day duty demands that I must lay all before you you cannot again be exposed to the horrors from which you were rescued only by a miracle."
In the bungalow within the north campong Sing and Number Thirteen had lifted Professor Maxon to his bed, and the Chinaman was engaged in bathing and bandaging the wound that had left the older man unconscious. The white giant stood beside him watching his every move. He was trying to understand why sometimes men killed one another and again defended and nursed.
Something told him that it was the ugly thing that carried her that was the author of her suffering. Virginia Maxon had been half unconscious from fright when she suddenly saw a white man, clothed in coarse, white, native pajamas, confronting her and the misshapen beast that was bearing her away to what frightful fate she could but conjecture.
"I'll give you until noon, Daddy," said the girl in a voice which carried a more strongly defined tone of authority than her father's soft drawl, "and then I shall come into that room, if I have to use an axe, and bring you out do you understand?" Professor Maxon smiled wanly. He knew that his daughter was equal to her threat.
In the eyes of the latter shone a strange gleam it was the wild light of insanity that the sudden nervous shock of the attack had brought to a premature culmination. Now the four remaining Dyaks were advancing upon the two men. Sing levelled his revolver and fired at the foremost, and at the same instant Professor Maxon, with a shrill, maniacal scream, launched himself full upon a second.
Then he gathered up Virginia Maxon, and with a sign to his Dyaks, who were thoroughly frightened at the mere sight of the white giant of whom they had heard such terrible stories, turned and hastened back in the direction from which they had come, leaving the man to what seemed must be a speedy and horrible death. Sing Lee was astounded at the perfidy of the act.
"I cannot answer your question, Miss Maxon," he said, finally, "for your father's strictest injunction has been that I divulge to no one the slightest happening within the court of mystery.
"The Ithaca would bear us to Singapore, and when we returned you would be under my legal protection and safe." "I shall think about it from every angle," she answered sadly, "and now good night, my dear friend," and with a wan smile she entered her quarters. For the next month Professor Maxon was busy educating Number Thirteen.
He thought the six with Bududreen were carrying out their part in a most realistic manner, and a grim smile tinged his hard face. Virginia Maxon turned resolutely toward the camp. "I must go back there to my father," she said, "and so must you.
"How fortunate it is, my dear doctor," said Professor Maxon, "that you were bright enough to think of trailing the miscreant into the jungle. But for that Virginia would still be in his clutches and by this time he would have been beyond all hope of capture. How can we ever repay you, dear friend?"
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