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She would fight like a hornet, now, she inwardly vowed, for what she held. Then she caught her breath, behind the locked door, for the sounds that crept in from the hallway told her that her fear had not been groundless. She heard Durkin's little choked cry of pain and surprise, for he had been seized, she knew, and pinned back against the door. It was Pobloff's men, she told herself.
It evoked visions of white women languorously moving in processional attitudes beneath the chaste rays of an implacable moon. The voice modulated into crisp morning inflections: "You are going far, Excellency?" She knew him! And the slave who grinned and grinned and never spoke what was he? She seemed to follow Pobloff's thought. "Hamet is dumb.
Pobloff was not a coward. After his adventure in Balak, he feared neither man nor devil, and he insolently returned the black fellow's gaze. They stood about a buffet and drank coffee. The young woman her outlines were girlish did not touch anything; she turned her face in Pobloff's direction, so he fancied, and spoke at intervals to her attendant.
Frank drew nearer Keenan, instinctively, wondering what the next movement would be. It was Pobloff's voice that first broke the silence. "This woman lies," he said, in his suavely scoffing baritone. "This woman " "Why don't you say something why don't you do something!" cried Frank, hysterically, turning to Keenan. "Ring the bell!" commanded Keenan. "It's useless the wires are cut," she panted.
He thought for a moment, with his hand on the doorknob. Then he turned back. "You'd better keep this, then, until I find what we have to face, outside here!" He passed into her hand the manila envelope, and stepped out into the hall. A moment later she had secreted the packet, along with Pobloff's revolver, which she picked up from the floor. Then she ran to the door, and locked it.
He remained on the rear platform of his car as long as the white station, beginning to blister under a tropical sun, was in sight. Then he sought his compartment. His amazement and rage were great when he found the two window seats occupied by the negro and the mysterious creature. Pobloff's bag was tumbled in a corner, his overcoat, hat, and umbrella tossed to the other end of the room.
It was all very disturbing to a man of Pobloff's equable disposition. He thought of Luga, his little wife, his dove; but not long. She did not appeal to his heart of hearts; she was a coquette. Pobloff sighed. He was midway in his mortal life, a dangerous period for susceptible manhood. He lifted moist eyes to the stars; the night was delicious. He rested upon a cushioned couch of stone.
"It's the papers, the Gibraltar papers!" "Papers?" he repeated wonderingly. "Yes, the imperial specifications. Pobloff's a paid agent in the French secret service. They say he was the man who secured Kitchener's Afghanistan frontier plans, and in some way or other had a good deal to do with the Curzon resignation." "Ah, I thought there was something behind our boyard!"
Luga, his wife, he had left weeping at the station; but since the day she disappeared with his orchestra for twenty-four hours, Pobloff's affection had gradually cooled; he was leaving the capital without a pang on a month's leave of absence a delicate courtesy of the king's extended to a brother ruler, though a semi-barbarous one, the khedive of Ramboul.
"And you got the money?" "Only half of it. They hedged, and said the other half could not be paid until Pobloff's arrest. Jim, we must be on our guard against that man." "Pobloff doesn't count!" ejaculated Durkin impatiently. "It's Keenan we have to have our fight with he's the man, the offender, we want! that means only two hundred and fifty pounds!" "But that is money honestly made!"
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