For a moment or two Eustace and the negress eyed one another. He was admiring her shapely form and stately bearing. Although black, she was comely, and in spite of the character given to her by Miss Cork, _alias_ Mrs. Burl, looked a good-natured creature in the main, although Jarman granted that she could be furious when aroused. On the evidence of the tartan ribbon, he wondered if she had been lurking in Mrs. Betts's kitchen on that fatal day, and whether she had killed the man she professed to love.
On her side Balkis was--as the Americans put it--sizing up her visitor. Her customers were for the most part Lascars, Malays, Chinamen, and sailors. But occasionally a gentleman from the West End would come to her respectable house to smoke a sly pipe of opium. Some even came to gamble, and Balkis was wondering if this well-looking man was a smoker or a gambler. She waited for him to speak, being shrewd and not caring to venture an opinion until she knew precisely what his business was.
"Do you know an old man called Tamaroo?" asked Eustace, suddenly.
Balkis looked at him serenely. "I never heard of him," she said.
Jarman noticed that she spoke almost as well as Tamaroo himself, and wondered that, within so short a space of time, he should come into contact with two educated members of the African race.
Evidently she was on her guard, so Eustace tried another shot.
"I was directed to this house by Mrs. Burl," he said.
This time Balkis showed emotion, and, to speak truly, became rather ferocious.
"She's a bad woman. An ungrateful woman! I saved her and her child from starving, and she--"
"She threatened to betray you," finished Jarman, serenely.