"That is all very well," Barry retorted hotly. "But why is she to go through all this trouble? Surely you have had chances enough to put her right. Leyden should have been run off the place when he first arrived. Vandersee is full of mystery, too, and I can't for my life see why he, if he is, as he says, a Government man, can't take charge of the schooner there, flog the jungle with trackers, and finish Leyden and his opium runners off-hand. Why, he has had a dozen chances. If my hands had not been tied by secret orders and later circumstances, I could have potted the beggar myself, easily. Now Miss Sheldon is gone. Where? You say Leyden fascinates her. Well, has she joined him? Where can she find him, in this maze of poisonous bush?"
"Let me assure you again, Captain Barry, that Mr. Vandersee is just what he has represented himself to be. Though things have happened to make you doubt him perhaps, believe me if I say that Leyden will not be killed by any chance bullet; he will be caught, and caught when his capture will have the result of bringing all the tangled threads together in the presence of every one vitally concerned. There is something far, far more serious than opium smuggling, or Houten's affairs, or his conflict with your party, for him to answer for. He will answer for all in the one great instant. Won't you please, please, Captain Barry, throw aside all doubts of Mr. Vandersee?"
She clasped both hands about his arm, gazed pleadingly into his dark face, and her red lips quivered piteously.
"I'd be glad to, Mrs. Goring, only for Miss Sheldon," replied Barry, his brain whirling again. "I have always believed in Vandersee, except at moments like these, when I think I ought to be taken more into his confidence. Can you wonder why I doubt, when that innocent girl vanishes like a ghost, and we all know what kind of snake waits in the grass for her?"
"Oh, I wish my—Mr. Vandersee—would come!" panted Mrs. Goring. "What can I say to you, Captain? I understand, perfectly, your emotions. Yet I can only repeat what seems to you a parrot cry, that Miss Sheldon shall not suffer one jot at Leyden's hands, except the suffering that must come with disillusionment. I say it again, and I swear it by the God that shall kill me if I lie!"
Barry rumpled his hair in perplexity. He did believe this pleading woman, usually so capable but now so piteous. But everything that had lately happened went to make chaos more chaotic in his mind. He placed his hand gently on the woman's shaking shoulder and soothed her:
"Yes, yes, Mrs. Goring, I believe all you say about Vandersee and am trying to believe the rest. I want to, because I have long since ceased to puzzle myself over your errand here or the manner of your arrival, and only see in you a woman bravely carrying on some great struggle that I know nothing of yet. But you ran in here five minutes ago, crying out that Natalie had vanished—the one thing on earth to send me headlong through the place with murder in my soul—and now you try to prevent me doing a thing towards finding what's happened to her."
"Oh, I can't explain it, Captain," she cried, but her face was brighter now. "I'm only a woman, too, and Natalie's disappearance shocked me, although I had expected it. I ran in on an impulse; an impulse forced me to try to restrain you; and I made a bad mess of it altogether, I'm afraid. It is so utterly vital, so tremendously imperative, that Leyden comes to no serious harm before Mr. Vandersee is ready to strike, that I feared to let you or Mr. Little seek him out in hot temper to kill him perhaps. But I do care about Natalie. Though I know quite well that she will suffer no harm at Leyden's hands here, my blood curdles at the thought of her being near him at all," Mrs. Goring shuddered violently, and Barry saw in her face a look of furious loathing that implanted still another question for future investigation in his already burdened mind. She went on: "If I have persuaded you of the necessity for leaving Leyden's fate in Vandersee's hands, Captain, I shall see you start out to find Natalie with glad heart, and God speed you."
"Then speed me now," laughed Barry, buckling on a cartridge belt and looking to the magazine of his automatic pistol. "Tell me one thing, though, to quite settle my doubts: What makes you so certain that Leyden can't harm Natalie, if she is in his hands? Then I'll go like a shot."
"You saw the dwarf at the gate?"