“We will leave the world out,” she entreated. “It would break my heart.”
“What can I do about it?” he asked, after a moment’s pause.
“Perhaps nothing,” she admitted. “I do not ask you to attempt impossibilities.”
“What do you ask?” he persisted doggedly.
“Bertram believes,” she went on, “that in that Image which Gregory went out to China to try to secure is hidden a treasure.”
“Secure,” he sneered, “is a quaint word.”
“I won’t argue with you about that, Ralph,” she said. “The fact remains that it was a dangerous adventure for a young man and it was undertaken for a worthy object. He risked his life, didn’t he, a dozen times over? Perhaps he failed. You know best.”
“What do I know?” he demanded.
“Whether he really has a chance of finding the treasure—whether the story is true.”
Endacott was silent for several moments, no longer indifferent, gazing into the lamplit recesses of the room, the muscles around his eyes more than once twitching.