"A letter for me?"
"Yes. And if you aren't quick about opening it I'll commit hari kari."
She was quick about opening it.
As she read, almost literally my eyes were glued to her face. It went white, then pink. "Thank heaven!" I said within myself. If she had been pink first and white afterward, I should have been alarmed. For a woman's colour to blossom warmly from a snowfield, means good news.
"Duffer!" she breathed. "Do you—know—what's in this?"
"I—thought it would come." My voice sounded rather queer. I'd fancied I had more self-control. "That's why I—wanted your card—for the Poste Restante."
"Read this," she said, and gave me the open letter.
It was written on paper of a hotel at Assuan, near the railway station, and was as follows:
MADAM: Let me explain frankly before I go further, that my name is Thomas Macmahan. You may remember it. If you do, you will not think it strange that I—as a private person, as well as a member of a Society—whose name it is not necessary to mention—wanted certain papers you were supposed to possess. For a long time I, and others almost equally interested, tried to trace you, after learning that you had the documents, or in any case knew where they were. Naturally we were prepared to go far in order to make you give them up. We believed that your step-daughter was with you. As the need was pressing, and we had failed more than once, we would, if necessary, have worked upon your feelings through her. Had we questioned you, and you had replied that we were mistaken concerning the young lady and the papers, we should have been incredulous. But accident enabled us to hear from your own lips, details which we could not disbelieve. As a woman we wish you no harm, therefore we rejoice in this turn of events, for your sake. Your step-daughter must now be one of us, through her husband. She has nothing further to fear, much as we regret her marriage into a family so deeply injured by her father. As for you, Madam, you may be at rest where we are concerned. You said to Lord Ernest Borrow in the Temple of Abu Simbel, that you could never be happy, until the Organization Richard O'Brien betrayed, "forgot and forgave his daughter and yourself." Through me, the Organisation now formally both forgets and forgives.
Wishing you well in future, Yours truly,