"
Then through the crimson mist that enveloped me I saw Blenheim laugh.
"Come, Mr. Bayne," he taunted me, "remember our friend Schwartzmann.
This is your business, Miss Falconer, I take it. What are you going to
do?"
The girl flung her head back, and her eyes blazed as she answered him.
"You can torture me," she said scornfully. "You can kill me. But I will
never give you the papers; you may be sure of that."
CHAPTER XXI
IN THE DARK
I thought of a number of things in the ensuing thirty seconds, but they
all narrowed down swiftly to a mere thankfulness that I had been born.
Suppose I hadn't; or suppose I had not happened to stop at the St. Ives
Hotel and sail on the _Re d'Italia_; or that I had remained in Rome with
Jack Herriott instead of hurrying on to Paris; or had let my quest of
the girl end in the rue St.-Dominique instead of trailing her to Bleau.
If one of these links had been omitted, the chain of circumstance would
have been broken, and Miss Falconer would have sat here confronting
these four men alone.
It was extremely hard for me to believe that the scene was genuine.
Pages:
204
205
206
207
208
209
210
211
212
213
214
215
216
217
218
219
220
221
222
223
224
225
226
227
228