Fury and terror blazed out on the big man's countenance. A sharp moan came from his lips.
"So she did know! You told her then! O, incredible fool!"
For an instant the demon of murder looked from the doctor's eyes. Phil quailed before him. A frenzy of fear twisted his features; he felt the passion that had been his undoing shrivel and fade like a parchment in a flame. His voice rose in a kind of scream:
"Don't look at me like that!" he raved. "I was a fool to trust her, but it's done now. It's done, I tell you, and you can't undo it! What can they do to us? They may find the machine, but what can they prove? We're foreigners! They can't touch us without proof!"
He had no thought now of the millions that were to have been his. All the grandiloquent pictures he had painted of the future faded in panic. He trembled excessively.
"Proof!" sneered Bersonin savagely. "There would have been none if—it happened! I had arranged that! In its operation the machine destroys itself! And neither of us is in Yokohama to-night."
Phil's ashen face set; his tongue curled round his parched lips. "What is to be done? Can we still—"
"Listen," said the doctor. "A single hour more, even with your cursed folly, and all would have been well, for no trains are running and all wires are down. I heard this afternoon, too, that the wireless is out of order."
"Then—then—they can not—" Phil's voice shook with a nauseous eagerness.
"Wait! When I saw the girl there, I was suspicious. I watched. In a little while your friend Daunt came from the gate. In some way he happened to be there. The betto was flogging the horses like a crazy man. He came in this direction!—Can't you understand? His aëroplane! He is going to use it as a last chance. If he succeeds, we may spend our lives in the copper mines. If he can be stopped, we may win yet! There will be nothing but the tale of a Japanese drab—that and nothing else!"