“Instructions!” she repeated slowly. “For Malta?”
“No—not that. I am going to East Africa.”
She did not cry out, but she fell back a step as if some unknown hand had struck her a heavy blow. Her eyes were absolutely frightened, and she spoke in a low voice of intense terror.
“But Ally—you can’t! You daren’t accept it—you can’t do it!”
He fired at the last words as if he half expected them. “Why not?” he said irritably. “Why can’t I do it? I must accept it—you must see that! I have accepted it already. It is arranged.”
“You can’t do it!” she repeated bluntly. “It is a heavy responsibility to give to any man—any experienced man even. Why isn’t Mr. Halton going?”
“He can’t be spared; there is an awful row going on already over the crops.”
“The hemp!” she said breathlessly, her memory going back to those words of Gregory’s—“They have given me carte blanche to do as I think best”—“They are not burning the crops?”
“Yes they are. The order went out yesterday. There is a compensation of course, but the Chinese are furious, and that gives them away, for they must have been making their fortunes out of the hashish. Halton must stay and see Gregory through it—he has no one to send but me.”
In a streak of terror through her quickened brain it seemed as if she saw all the disaster of the choice. She had never finally acknowledged to herself that Ally depended on her for the least success in his life, but in the stress of the moment she knew that with her to guide and counsel and manage he might come through this ordeal—not creditably, but without failure. Without her it was like sending a child to play with a train of gunpowder. Some horrible intuition seemed to tell her his incapacity, and excuse the belief in herself. Ally in a position that needed absolute diplomacy! Ally managing a delicate enquiry that might lead to a serious issue! She realised only in her dismay that she could not go with him to East Africa to save him from failure—the loss of her own escape from secret peril did not really trouble her mind at the time. The fear for him drove her to repeating blankly, “You can’t do it—you mustn’t!”