"I am yours," he said.
"Then quickly, and soon, Pu-Yi, for you are only half informed. Gideon Morse may be driven mad by fear, no doubt he is. But it is not an imaginary fear. It is a thing so sinister, so real and terrible, that I cannot tell you of it now. I am too exhausted by the events of this night. I will say only this, that within the last hour a faithful friend of mine has returned from the other side of the world and brings me ominous news."
I believe that Pu-Yi, whose movements were, of course, not restricted like those of the lower officials, returned to the towers in the early morning. As for me, I caught a workmen's train from Richmond station, slunk in an early taxi to Piccadilly with Arthur Winstanley, and slipped into lavender-clean sheets and silence till past noon, when Captain Patrick Moore arrived to an early lunch. Dressed again in proper clothes, with dear old Preston fussing about me with tears in his eyes, I felt a thousand times more confident than before. Old Pat had to be informed of everything, and as a preliminary I told him my whole story, from the starting-point of the "Golden Swan."
"And now," I said, "here's Arthur, who has traveled thousands of miles and who has come back with information that fits in absolutely with everything else. He gave me an epitome last night, under strange and fantastic circumstances. Now then, Arthur, let's have it all clearly, and then we shall know where we are."
Arthur, whose face was white and strained, began at once.
"I went straight to Rio," he said, "and of course I took care that I was accredited to our Legation. As a matter of fact the Minister to the Brazilian Government is my cousin. The news about the towers was all over Brazil. Everybody there knows Gideon Mendoza Morse. He's been by a long way the most picturesque figure in South America during the last twenty years. He has been President of the Republic. Of course, I had the freshest news. My mother had given a party to introduce Juanita to London society. I had danced with her. I had talked to her father—I was the young English society man who brought authentic news. I told all I knew, and a good bit more, and I sucked in information like a vacuum-cleaner. I learnt a tremendous lot as to the sources of Morse's enormous wealth. I was glad to find that there were no allegations against him of any trust methods, any financial tricks. He had got rich like one of the old patriarchs, simply by shrewdness and long accumulation and rising values. But I had to go a good deal farther back than this, I had to dive into obscure politics of South America, and then—it was almost like a punch on the jaw—I stumbled against the Santa Hermandad."
Pat Moore and I cried out simultaneously.
"What on earth do you mean?"
"Our League?"