“Val—a Christian name?”
“I heard the rest of it was Imroth. Some said he was a German Jew who had been in Buenos Ayres. I don’t know. We were to get the stuff easy and all cross back by different routes. Mine was Southampton—Havre. I’d have been back in Paris to-morrow night but for you. Good God, what luck!”
“The best, perhaps, you ever had in your wretched life. Please to go on. You were to return to Paris—with the diamonds?”
“Oh, no; Rouge la Gloire carried those—on the ship, of course. I was to cross the scent. You don’t know Val Imroth. There isn’t another man like him in Paris. If he thought I’d told you this, he’d murder the pair of us, though he crossed two continents to do it. I’ve seen him at it. My God, if you’d seen all I’ve seen, Dr. Fabos!”
“You have my name, it appears. I am not so fortunate.”
He hung down his head, and I saw with no little satisfaction that he blushed like a girl.
“I was Harry Avenhill once,” he said.
“The son of Dr. Avenhill, of Cambridge?”
“It’s as true as night.”
“Thank God that your father is dead. We will speak of him again—when the seed has begun to grow a little warm. I want now to go back a step. This ship in which my diamonds were to go——”