His face blanched oddly at my words. An hour ago he would have heard them with oaths and curses. Now, however, his bravado had gone with his courage. Perhaps I had made no real appeal to the old instincts of his boyhood. But his fear and his hope of some advantage of confession brought him to his knees.
“I can’t tell you much,” he stammered.
“You can tell me what you know.”
“Well—what about it then?”
“Ah! that is reason speaking. First, the name of the man.”
“What man do you speak of?”
“The man who sent you to this house. Was it from Paris, from Rome, from Vienna? You are wearing French boots, I see. Then it was Paris, was it not?”
“Oh, call it Paris, if you like.”
“And the man—a Frenchman?”
“I can’t tell you. He spoke English. I met him at Quaz-Arts, and he introduced me to the others—a big man with a slash across his jaw and pock-marked. He kept me at a great hotel six weeks. I was dead out of luck—went over there to get work in a motor-works and got chucked—well, I don’t say for what. Then Val came along——”