"Good Lord, no! the less moon the better in his case!" said Bramham grimly. "Where the deuce has he been all these years, Karri?"
Carson shrugged.
"Not much doubt about where he has been! He could give us some vivid inside information about the slow-fires that consume."
They smoked a while in silence. Later, Bramham said:
"Whatever Carmen Braganza found to do, she did it well! She told me that it had only taken her six months to learn to dance as she did—and you know how she danced! And, I suppose, if she had studied her man for a hundred years, instead of three months, she could not have got in a subtler revenge on Abinger—laying waste his looks like that! It's hard to believe what a magnificent specimen he was; and how mad the women were about him! Bah! it was a foreign devil's trick!"
"But she was a foreign devil. That was the point Abinger lost sight of."
"Did you ever hear who the other woman was, Karri?"
"Never. It was an amazing thing that it never leaked out, considering that the whole Rand was nose to trail. But the fact was, I suppose, that no one knew who she was except Abinger and his old housekeeper."
"And Carmencita herself. She swore to me afterwards that she had sprung upon them from behind a curtain in Abinger's room and slashed his face open before the other woman's eyes. Why she kept silence God only knows! More foreign tricks probably."
"The other woman must have felt mighty uncomfortable all the months after, while Carmen stayed on dancing, and everyone was hot to find Abinger and get to the bottom of the mystery. There is no doubt that if he hadn't disappeared so neatly afterwards the police would have found some ground for rooting out the whole scandal for the public benefit, and the other woman's name would have been thrown to the beasts!"