"Professor Helmuth died, and we tried to get hold of the original papers at the library, but there had been an outbreak of Royalists and everything was closed or in disorder. So we came to Dresden and, later, made up the expedition. That's all, sir!"
"And enough." Hammer turned to Sara Helmuth. "Anything you would like to ask him, Miss Helmuth?"
"No," she shuddered, looking away. "Get him out of my sight."
Jenson needed no urging to remove himself, and for a space the two in the stern remained silent, while the motor sent its staccato exhaust humming over the sea. The Melindi light was very close now, and Hammer headed for the river, since the launch was small enough to get into the mouth of the Sabaki and make the dock.
"Thank you, Mr. Hammer," the girl spoke in a low voice as she turned to him. "So it was that man who brought about father's betrayal! I think that he will suffer punishment for that, one day."
The American gave little heed to her words at the time, but he was to remember them later, when he and Sara Helmuth and Adolf Jenson were facing the end of things together.
Jenson's soul seemed to Hammer as colourless as his face. He lay amidships, over a thwart beyond the motor, in silence: odd, thought the American, that while the man was a creature of lies and theft and treachery yet he was the veriest coward withal.
Baumgardner, who was smoking a pipe, had also come amidships to the wheel there, while Mohammed Bari was sitting forward, just beyond Jenson, chewing betel and humming some monotonous native air to himself.
The American overlooked one significant fact, namely, that Baumgardner, as well as the other Germans of the crew, had been with Krausz for several years, and since the Melindi fight was now so close he apprehended no further trouble.
He was joying in the fact that the girl's confidence had drawn them a bit closer together, mentally; and by that curious sixth sense which comes to men at such moments he felt that she also realized this, and that it was not unwelcome to her.