The papers!
Japanese character thus brought its fresh surprise to Orme. Even after this hard fight, when three of his friends lay groaning on the ground—when he had in his power the man who had injured them, who had temporarily bested himself—Arima’s chief thought was still of the papers!
He seemed to have none of the semi-barbarian vengefulness that might have been expected. He merely wished the papers—wished them the more desperately with every passing moment. The lives of his companions counted for nothing besides the papers!
“Where?” repeated Arima.
“I haven’t them,” said Orme. “You ought to know that by this time.”
The answer was a torturing pressure on Orme’s spine. “You tell,” hissed Arima.
As the pressure increased Orme’s suffering was so keen that his senses began to slip away. He was gliding into a state in which all consciousness centered hazily around the one sharp point of pain.
Then, suddenly, he was released. For a moment he staggered limply, but his strength surged back, and he was able to see how the situation had changed.
The girl had swung her car in closer to the edge of the grove and nearer to the struggling figures. Doubtless she had some idea of helping. But the effect of the change in the position of her car was to permit the searchlight of the other car to throw its bright beam without interruption down the road. And there, perhaps fifty feet to the southward, gleamed something white.
The girl could not see it, for her car was headed north. But Arima saw it, and in a flash he realized what it was. The papers lay there at the side of the road, where Orme had tossed them a moment before the two cars met.