“And that’s the man,” he meditated, astounded, “who must have planned the robbery of the Hôtel St. James! And I never suspected it! I never suspected that his gendarme was a sham! I wonder whether his murder of me would have been as leisurely and artistic as his method of trapping me! I wonder!... Well, this time I have certainly enjoyed myself.”
Then he gazed at Eve Fincastle.
The women said nothing for a long time, and even then the talk was of trifles.
V.
Eve Fincastle had gone up on to the vast, flat roof of the Royal Hotel, and Cecil, knowing that she was there, followed. The sun had just set, and Biskra lay spread out below them in the rich evening light which already, eastwards, had turned to sapphire. They could still see the line of the palm trees of Sidi Okba, and in another direction, the long, lonely road to Figuig, stretching across the desert like a rope which had been flung from heaven on the waste of sand. The Aurès mountains were black and jagged. Nearer, immediately under them, was the various life of the great oasis, and the sounds of that life—human speech, the rattle of carriages, the grunts of camels in the camel enclosure, the whistling of an engine at the station, the melancholy wails of hawkers—ascended softly in the twilight of the Sahara.
Cecil approached her, but she did not turn towards him.
“I want to thank you,” he started.
She made no movement, and then suddenly she burst out. “Why do you continue with these shameful plots and schemes?” she demanded, looking always steadily away from him. “Why do you disgrace yourself? Was this another theft, another blackmailing, another affair like that at Ostend? Why——” She stopped, deeply disturbed, unable to control herself.
“My dear journalist,” he said quietly, “you don’t understand. Let me tell you.”
He gave her his history from the night summons by Mrs. Macalister to that same afternoon.