He looked at Bertram as if he thought he must be responsible for the other's presence.
"You do your friend an injustice if you suspect him," said Brockford. "He did not know that I was following him. It was Doubleday, the bank manager, who put me on the trail. He sent word to me that your friend was at the bank, and when he left I followed him here. Thank God, I have found you at last. We have searched the country for you. Oh, you foolish man, why did you run away like that?"
"Because my brother Paul was in Rio looking for me," Max replied simply. "To have remained here would have been to have fallen into his hands."
"And could you have fallen into kinder hands?"
"That is beside the point," said Max. "It is because of his love for me that I must keep out of the way. It may sound paradoxical to say so, but it is the truth."
"Well, you can keep out of the way no longer now," answered Brockford. "You have returned in the nick of time."
"Returned for what?" Max inquired in astonishment.
"Do you mean to say that you don't know?" asked the other.
"I know nothing," Max replied, with an unmistakable faltering in his voice. "We have been in the wilds so long that we are ignorant of all that has happened elsewhere. What is it?"
Bertram noticed that the hand resting on the back of the chair trembled.