"He did, Mr. Cavanagh, two days ago. And—"
"Yes?" I urged, as gently as I could, for she was shaking pitifully.
"He never came back!"
The words were spoken almost in a whisper. She clenched her hands and leapt from the chair, fighting down her grief and with such a stark horror in her beautiful eyes that from my very soul I longed to be able to help her.
"Mr. Cavanagh" (she had courage, this bewildering accomplice of a cracksman), "I know the house he went to! I cannot hope to make you understand what I have suffered since then. A thousand times I have been on the point of going to the police, confessing all I knew, and leading them to that house! O God! if only he is alive, this shall be his last crooked deal — and mine! I dared not go to the police, for his sake! I waited, and watched, and hoped, through two such nights and days … then I ventured. I should have gone mad if I had not come here. I knew you had good cause to hate, to detest me, but I remembered that you had a great grievance against Hassan. Not as great, O heaven! not as great as mine, but yet a great one. I remembered, too, that you were the kind of man — a woman can come to… "
She sank back into the chair, and with her fingers twining and untwining, sat looking dully before her.
"In brief," I said, "what do you propose?"
"I propose that we endeavour to obtain admittance to the house of Hassan of Aleppo — secretly, of course, and all I ask of you in return for revealing the secret of its situation is—"
"That I let Dexter go free?"
Almost inaudibly she whispered: "If he lives!"