The American was at a loss to make out what had happened to Potbelly. The mission-boy had arrived grinningly, almost insolently, and after a look at the ring he had seemed to be transfixed by terror. What was there about that ring to create such an impression? Certainly it looked harmless enough, and Herr Krausz would have observed anything unduly curious about it.
From inside the tent of Professor Helmuth he could hear, as he waited, Potbelly's voice rising shrilly, though the words were lost. Then came a softer, deeper voice, which he recognized as that of the lady in question. He grinned to himself as he remembered her cool determination of that morning.
"I guess Potbelly's having his troubles about now," he thought. "By Godfrey, I'll have to get to the bottom of this mystery some way! And the only way to do it, I guess, is to have a frank explanation with Professor Sara L. Helmuth—bless her brown eyes! I wonder why I never liked that name Sara before now!"
Hammer was still cogitating this all-important point when he saw Potbelly's black visage appear from the tent-flap, and the boy beckoned hastily. The American, holding the ring in his hand, stepped to the tent door.
Sara L. Helmuth, professor and mistress of Semitic languages, was sitting at the table inside, a revolver ready to her hand.
Simply and coolly dressed in white, with her rippling brown hair coiled loosely on her head, she offered an extremely attractive picture to Cyrus Hammer, is spite of the circles of weariness and trouble about her eyes.
He had always felt a weakness for women who were self-reliant without becoming, as he had phrased it, "short-haired", and that she was such a woman had been evident from the first. Moreover, the doctor had said that she was just twenty-three.
She did not rise, but stood looking at him for a moment, and Hammer felt that to her the situation was, for some reason, very grave. Instinctively he sympathized with her, and under the thought his face lost its harder outlines, though it retained to the full all its rugged, healthy strength. Then she waved her hand toward a camp-stool just inside the door.
"Sit down, Mr. Hammer. Make sure the boys are watching, Potbelly."
The mission-boy disappeared. Hammer felt unaccountably at a loss, as though all his assurance were ebbing away beneath her steady gaze, and waited for her to speak.