“Finish the story!” That was all that he could do.
“Finish the story!” His story and hers—only just begun, and now to end there in the dark.
But with a calmness as great as her own, he proceeded to tell all that had happened to him since he boarded the electric-car at Evanston and saw Maku sitting within. She pressed his hand gently when he described the trick by which the Japanese had brought the pursuit to an end. She laughed when he came to his meeting with the detective in his apartment. The episode with Madame Alia he passed over lightly, for part of it rankled now. Not that he blamed himself foolishly but he wished that it had not happened.
“That woman did a fine thing,” said the girl.
He went on to describe his efforts to get free from Alcatrante.
“And you were under the table in Arima’s room,” she exclaimed, when he had finished.
“I was there; but I couldn’t see you, Girl. And you seemed to doubt me.”
“To doubt you?”
“Don’t you remember? You said that no American had the papers; but you added, unless——”
“Unless Walsh, the burglar, had played a trick on Poritol and held the true papers back. I went straight from Arima’s to the jail and had another talk with Walsh. He convinced me that he knew nothing at all about the papers. He seemed to think that they were letters which Poritol wanted for his own purposes.”