“I am afraid that is not possible. It has to be returned.”
“We can get over that easily enough. You are probably as eager as I am to know who wrote it. As for returning it, I’ll write out another in my own hand, and that one can be returned.”
After some demur this was agreed to; and I went to the desk and wrote the duplicate letter, and was careful to fold it up so that Maral should not miss the strip of paper I had annexed.
While I was writing, Barosa paced up and down the room thinking. The fact that there was a traitor somewhere among the followers disquieted him profoundly. And when I had finished he came up to me and said with intense earnestness: “You have some definite purpose in keeping that letter, Mr. Donnington?”
“Naturally. I mean to try and find the writer of it.”
“Are you sure there is no one you suspect?”
“I do not know all your followers; if there is any one among them who seeks to prevent my getting——”
He broke in, with an impatient motion of the hand. “Do you give me your word you have no positive suspicion?”
“Is that a question you should expect me to answer? I am not one of you, and I have no interest whatever in your cause. If I am anxious to discover the writer, it is for my own purposes not yours.”
“We are helping you in trusting that to you.”