"You say you saw all the things I described. Please do not think me stupid, but I do not understand how you could have done so."
Thereupon I told her all that had befallen me at the ruins of Karnak. She listened with feverish interest.
"How is it that Providence allows this man to live?" she cried when I had finished. "Who is he and what is the terrible power he possesses? And what is to be the end of all his evil ways?"
"That is a problem which only the future can solve," I answered. "For ourselves it is sufficient that we must get away from him and at once. Nothing could be easier, he exercises no control over our movements. He does not attempt to detain us. We go in and out as we please, therefore all we have to do is to get into a train and be hundreds of miles away before he is even aware that we are outside the doors of the hotel. You are not afraid, Valerie, to trust yourself and your happiness to me?"
"I would trust myself with you anywhere," she answered, and as she said it she pressed my hand and looked into my face with her brave sweet eyes. "And for your sake I would do and bear anything."
Brave as her words were, however, a little sigh escaped her lips before she could prevent it.
"Why do you sigh?" I asked. "Have you any doubt as to the safety of our plan? If so tell me and I will change it."
"I have no doubt as to the plan," she answered. "All I fear is that it may be useless. I have already told you how I have twice tried to escape him, and how on each occasion he has brought me back."
"He shall not do so this time," I said with determination. "We will lay our plans with the greatest care, behave toward him as if we contemplated remaining for ever in his company, and then to-morrow morning we will catch the train for Berlin, be in Hamburg next day, and in London three days later. Once there I have half a hundred friends who, when I tell them that you are hiding from a man who has treated you most cruelly, and that you are about to become my wife, will be only too proud to take you in. Then we will be married as quickly as can be arranged, and as man and wife defy Pharos to do his worst."
She did her best to appear delighted with my plan, but I could see that she had no real faith in it. Nor, if the truth must be told, was I in my own heart any too sanguine of success. I could not but remember the threat the man had held over me that night in the Pyramid at Gizeh: "For the future you are my property, to do with as I please. You will have no will but my pleasure, no thought but to act as I shall tell you." However, we could but do our best, and I was determined it should not be my fault if our enterprise did not meet with success. Not once but a hundred times we overhauled our plan, tried its weak spots, arranged our behaviour before Pharos, and endeavoured to convince each other as far as possible that it could not fail. And if we did manage to outwit him how proud I should be to parade this glorious creature in London as my wife, and as I thought of the happiness the future might have in store for us, and remembered that it all depended on that diabolical individual Pharos, I felt sick and giddy with anxiety to see the last of him.