"Just the same you've made a mistake," said Billy in a dogged and argumentative tone. "I'm not interested in visiting any wife of yours. The lady I'm representing says you didn't marry her. But she says you did keep back most of her jewelry and she's giving the story to the papers to-morrow unless I return with the stuff to-night."
He could not guess what impression this speech was making.
"I am not interested in your stories, Monsieur," the Turk returned blandly. "I am interested only in your dispatching—which I feel should be prolonged beyond the mercy of a shot."
"Look here, I'm not a common robber and you know it," said Billy, and his voice sounded rough and angry. "I'm here to collect the property of the lady you detained here, while she was under contract in Vienna. I don't want anything more than belongs to her. She left——"
"With a great deal more upon her than she brought! But am I to suppose, Monsieur, that you have made your way here, at some personal inconvenience, I should say, to discuss the generosity of my remuneration to the lady?" There was a tense silence and the Captain continued in a low, almost purring voice, "You do not appear, even now, to comprehend the thing you have done. I shall do my best to make you comprehend—and before I have finished it may be that I shall have a clearer explanation of this impulsive call. You have no notion, Monsieur, how certain things unloose the tongue—but you shall discover."
Billy saw his white teeth show in a deadly smile. Back of him a dark, heavy figure appeared and the Captain, without turning his head or moving his eyes or his gun from Billy, gave some rapid directions in Turkish and the figure disappeared. It occurred to Billy like a flash that from that secret passage where the figure had appeared there was a panel into the room on the right and that room had a door opening into the hall outside. The next moment he felt the door behind him open.
Then he pulled the trigger of that gun in his pocket in which his hand had been so lightly resting. The Captain seemed to fire the same instant, but Billy had jumped aside as he shot his own gun and he heard the bullet singing past his ear, and now, with his revolver out of his pocket, he shot again with an aim so true that the other man's right hand gave a spasmodic jerk and the revolver went spinning to the ground.
Across the room he hurled himself, springing from the onslaught of the assailant entering behind him, and thrusting the cursing Captain from his path he leaped through the sliding panel. The lock clicked home and he paused even in that moment of hammering pulses and pounding heart to fumble in the darkness to shut that other panel into the next room, remembering Fritzi's warning that those locks needed a key to open them from within. The minute's delay for the key would mean many minutes for him.
He stumbled against the tiny stairs that led to the tower room through which Falconer had descended, but he did not dash up those stairs for he heard the noise of feet overhead, as if returning from pursuit, and he darted straight on through the long, narrow, unlighted corridor, running like a hare.
At the other end he crashed against a half-open door and fell headlong down a flight of stairs. From his astonished fingers the revolver went clattering and though he picked himself up, battered but unbroken, at the foot, he dared not waste a minute to go back and hunt for the gun in the dark. He was totally at a loss for directions; he had expected to find himself in the Captain's rooms, and the stairs were unknown. Now he could just make out a door ahead of him and sent it flying open, smash in the face of an astonished black boy who went stumbling backwards.