"'Yes,' I said, for it was useless to hold up our disguises any longer. 'What of him?'
"'He came here,' the princess said. 'He learned some of our secrets. Then it was found out and he had to walk the Black Valley. He died.'
"All this was news to me. So astonished was I that I blurted out the truth. Only a year before, long after Voski was supposed to be dead, I had met him in London. When I mentioned Lassa he changed the subject and refused to continue the conversation. I fancied that he suspected me of chaffing him. Now I know that he had been through the horrors of the Black Valley and—escaped.
"The eyes of the princess blazed when she heard this. She was a wild devastating fury. It seemed almost impossible to believe that I had seen her in a tea gown at Simla, chattering Society platitudes in a white sahib's bungalow. And I bitterly regretted betraying myself, because I knew that, wherever he was, Voski would be hunted down and killed, as they were seeking to kill me, as they would slay Ralph Ravenspur, only they have not recognized him."
"Hence the changed face and the glasses?" Geoffrey asked.
"You have guessed it," said Ralph. "I did not want to be known. I am only a poor demented idiot, a fool who cumbers the ground."
"I had betrayed Voski without doing any good to myself," Tchigorsky resumed. "If any harm has come to him, I am his murderer. Presently the princess calmed down, and the old cruel mocking light came back to her eyes. We were speaking English by this time—a language utterly unknown to the awestruck, open-mouthed priests around us.
"'Let us pretend that this is my drawing room in India, and that I am entertaining you at tea,' she said. 'Later you shall know something of me in my real character. I suppose you recognized the risks that you ran?'
"'Perfectly,' I replied. 'We are going to be done to death in barbarous fashion, because we have come here and learned your secrets as your husband did.'
"I could afford this shot. I could afford to say anything. We were going to perish by a death the horror of which is beyond all words, and had I pulled the nose of the princess, had I strangled her as she sat there, the punishment could have been made no worse.