“Then you are really Rogers, instead of Pembroke?” Dave asked.
“I’ve used both names, but neither belongs to me. I have had so many names in my day that I barely remember my right one, which I’m not going to tell you, anyway. I came of decent people, and some of them are left. I’m not going to disgrace them. Darrin, I expect that I’m going to die, and I’m going to try to do it like a man—the first manly thing I’ve done in years. If I wanted to live at all now, it would be that I might stand and take my punishment for my connection with this Nu-ping affair.”
“I don’t believe that you could be punished for that by Americans,” Dave went on. “You are a British subject, and your offense was committed on Chinese soil.”
“I’m about as English as you are,” returned Pembroke. “If I were a Britisher, and any good I’d been serving my country, right now, in France. I was born on the Atlantic seaboard of the United States. Out of decency I’m not going to name my birth state. At times, when it suited better, I’ve been an Englishman as a matter of convenience. But what I want to tell you about, especially, Darrin, is my connection with this Nu-ping business.”
“Did that connection begin back in Manila?” Darrin asked.
“In Nu-ping first, but there was a Manila end. It won’t take long to tell the story. I—”
In an instant a deadly pallor appeared in the stricken man’s face. Then he lay silent.
“Doctor, I think Pembroke has gone,” said Dave quietly, as he stepped over to the surgeon who was bent over another cot.
[CHAPTER XIV—DAVE HEARS SOME EYE-OPENERS]
“I’ll look at the chap in a moment,” replied Dr. Oliver.