‘Heavens, man, you’re as white as a sheet! Have you seen a ghost? Does Constantine walk—or Mouraki?’
‘Fifty ghosts would be a joke to what I’ve been through. My God, I never had such a time! What do you want? What did you call me for? I can’t stay. She’s waiting.’ For now I did not care; Denny and all Neopalia might know now.
‘Yes, but she must wait a little,’ he said. ‘You must come into the house and come upstairs.’
‘I can’t,’ I said obstinately. ‘I—I—I can’t, Denny.’
‘You must. Don’t be a fool, Charley. It’s important: the captain is waiting for you.’
His face seemed big with news. What it might be I could not tell, but the hint of it was enough to make me catch hold of him, crying, ‘What is it? I’ll come.’
‘That’s right. Come along.’ He turned and ran rapidly through the old hall and up the stairs. I followed him, my mind whirling through a cloud of possibilities.
The quiet business-like aspect of the room into which Denny led the way did something to sober me. I pulled myself together, seeking to hide my feelings under a mask of carelessness. The captain sat at the table with a mass of papers surrounding him. He appeared to be examining them, and, as he read, his lips curved in surprise or contempt.
‘This Mouraki was a cunning fellow,’ said he; ‘but if anyone had chanced to get hold of this box of his while he was alive he would not have enjoyed even so poor a post as he thought his governorship. Indeed, Lord Wheatley, had you been actually a party to his death, I think you need have feared nothing when some of these papers had found their way to the eyes of the Government. We’re well rid of him, indeed! But then, as I always say, these Armenians, though they’re clever dogs—’
But I had not come to hear a Turk discourse on Armenians, and I broke in, with an impatience that I could not altogether conceal: