"You forget Evie."
"Who is safe at Panama, beyond your reach, you scoundrel. Why should I fear you as a rival since your life is forfeit as soon as you show your head?"
He could not have spoken more insolently himself. It was hot shot, but I poured it in for a purpose. The mask fell from his face. One could see the devil in his eyes now.
"You reject my offer," he said, breathing hard to repress his rising passion.
A second man had come out of the jungle and was moving toward us. It was time to be going. I moved back a step or two, my fingers caressing the butt of a revolver.
"Yes, since I don't want to commit suicide, captain."
He suddenly lost his temper completely and hopelessly. He glared at me in a speechless rage, half of a mind to fight our quarrel out on the spot. But the advantage lay with me. All I had to do to blaze away was to tilt the point of my revolver at him without drawing it from the scabbard. Then words came, poured out of him in a torrent. He cursed me in Russian, in French, in English.
I backed from him, step by step, till I was out of range. Then, swiftly as his rage had swept upon him it died away, leaving him white and shaken. He leaned heavily upon the man who had now joined him.
Unless I was much mistaken the man was George Fleming.