Hélène shook her head.
"Ye-es, that's true, but—I saw her this morning. Humph! Maybe I'm a fool. I told Toutou to mind his own business, and not mix into the tribe's affairs. Tokalji said she was all right, and that ought to be enough."
"God help Toutou if he went after her," I said facetiously.
Hélène gave me a quick glance.
"Maybe you're right," she said. "I've often wondered what Toutou would do against a woman who used a knife. He—he gets 'em in a different way. Well, I'm babbling, which is a sign of old age. Be good, boys, and give up before you get into serious trouble. As ever, your well-wisher, Hélène."
And she tripped off.
"What a delightful criminal," I remarked. "Somehow I don't mind so much the idea of being plucked by her."
"You're losing your perspective," growled Hugh, who was in a righteous frame of mind, partly because he was in love and partly because of his clash with Hilyer. "A crook is a crook. They're all against us. I don't know but that the women are the most dangerous where you are concerned, Jack. Why are you so damned susceptible?"
At which I laughed. Nikka, walking beside us, had no ears for our conversation. His thoughts were on that slim, brown Tzigane maid about whom Hélène de Cespedes had inquired. But he woke up a block farther on, when a big, turbanned figure shambled past us, with a guttural exclamation from the corner of his mouth. At the next corner there was a traffic block, and we grouped casually around Wasso Mikali.
"Tokalji's women and children are in camp beyond Boghazkeui on the edge of the Forest of Belgrade," he murmured, staring at a fat Turkish Pasha who was rolling by in a Daimler. "There are five men with them. Five other men have left Sokaki Masyeri since morning. If Franks were there they have gone."