“What does this mean?” she asked Barosa.
“You can see for yourself,” was the reply.
“You shall not do this in my house. Lower your pistols, you,” she cried to the men.
They looked to Barosa, who hesitated a second, and then signed to them to leave the room.
At that moment the strain told on me. I turned dizzy and weak, and sat, or rather slid, down on to the foot of the bed, and lolled helplessly against the wall.
An angry altercation followed between Inez and Barosa, but I paid no attention to it. I could not; and some minutes passed before I was able to pull my wits together sufficiently to hear what passed.
Barosa was about to leave the room. “The responsibility is yours, not mine,” he was saying. “I tell you that while that man is alive, not one of us is safe. You know how the police are hunting for us. They will come here to a certainty, and then——” and he threw up his hands angrily and went out.
Inez sat down and leaned her head on her hand in thought, and presently turned and looked at me, with a deep despairing sigh.
The interval gave me time to think. It was beginning to dawn upon me that the whole thing was play-acting, and that Inez herself had had her cue to enter for her part in it.
“Mr. Donnington?” she began at length.