"I am very much afraid you will think me pertinacious, but is it permissible for me to know your name?"
"You may certainly know it if you wish to!" she answered with a short and, I could not help thinking, rather bitter laugh; "But I don't think you will be any too pleased when you hear it. My real name is Alie, but by the benighted inhabitants of this part of the globe I am called by another and more picturesque cognomen."
She stopped, and I almost caught my breath with excitement. A light was breaking upon me.
"And that is——" I said, trying in vain to keep my voice down to a steady level.
"The Beautiful White Devil," she answered, with another of her peculiar smiles, and then, calling her bulldog to her, she bowed to me, turned on her heel, and went slowly aft along the deck.
I laid myself back in my hammock, my heart—why, I could not say—beating like a piston-rod, and tried to think the situation out. So my thoughtless wish was gratified after all: I had now seen the Beautiful White Devil face to face, and, what was more to the point, I was likely to be compelled to see more of her than I should consider necessary for my own amusement. Like the Sultan of Surabaya and Vesey of Hong Kong, I was now her prisoner. And by what a simple ruse I had been caught! By all that was reasonable in woman, however, what possible advantage could she hope to gain by abducting me? At the very most, I could not lay my hands on more than three thousand pounds, and what earthly use could that be to a woman who was known to deal in millions? But perhaps, I reflected, it was not money she was after; perhaps she had some other desperate game to play—some other move in that wonderful life of hers in which my science could be of use to her and the nature of which I could not be expected to fathom. Situated as I was, she could compel me to do her bidding if she pleased, or make it extremely awkward for me if I felt it my duty to refuse.
You will doubtless have noticed that I had quite abandoned the idea of the small-pox epidemic. The notion of that island with the raging pestilence probably only existed in the fertile brain of the man who had been sent to induce me to leave Hong Kong. But in that case—and here the original argument wheeled back upon me—what possible advantage could accrue to her through abducting me? There were hundreds of richer men in Hong Kong. Why had not one of them been chosen? But as the more I thought it out, the farther I seemed to be from getting at the truth of it, I gave the problem up and turned my thoughts in another direction.
As I did so I heard somebody coming along the deck. This time it was a man's footstep, so I looked out to see who it might be. It was Walworth, the individual who had visited me in Hong Kong and enticed me away. He was dressed in European habiliments now, and carried a cigarette in his hand. Seeing that I was aware of his presence he came across to the hammock and held out his hand.
"Good morning, doctor!" he said cheerily enough. "I'm glad to see you're better. All things considered you've had a nasty time of it since you said good-bye to the Victoria Hotel—haven't you?"
"A pretty cheeky way of putting it, considering he was the cause of it all," I thought to myself. "However, I'll give him a Roland for his Oliver! He shall not think I'm wanting in pluck."