"We were talking of a swim that George and I propose to have in these pleasant waters," he remarked. "There are supposed to be a good many sharks about, and Virginia is advising prudence."
"Oh!" breathed Lady Gardiner. "She is quite right. We will all join our persuasions to hers. But the Countess tells me this island is actually New Caledonia, the French penal settlement. Isn't that where your friend Miss Dalahaide's brother is imprisoned?"
"I believe so," said Virginia.
"How exciting! And how well you've kept the secret of this expedition! Is there any chance of our coming across the interesting murderer?"
"Don't call him that!" Virginia cried hotly. "How do you suppose that it would be possible for us to come across him? Do tourists who go to Portland 'come across' prisoners who have been convicted of murder—whether innocent or not? Noumea isn't the only port we have visited. It is on our way. We shall stop a day or two, and then—we shall go on somewhere else."
"Quite so," drily returned Lady Gardiner.
It was noon when they slowly steamed into the beautiful harbour of Noumea, and before them lay the crime-cursed land, fair with the fatal fairness of deadly nightshade.
There, for nearly five years, Maxime Dalahaide had not lived, but existed. To give him back to life, she had come thousands of miles and spent more than twenty thousand pounds. What would they find that he had become, if those precious documents which Roger had obtained proved as potent as they hoped? Would his brain and heart have been strong enough to bear the hopeless agony, the shame, the hideous associations of those years which to him must have seemed a century of despair; or would he have fallen under the burden?
Virginia shivered as if with cold, as she fancied a hard, official voice announcing that Number So-and-So was dead.