You are always like that! There is so much that you want to know!”
“Most women, Hiram—not me! Do I ever seek to know your secrets? But this time—yes, it would be wiser to tell me a little!”
“Well?”
“This Mr. Trent, he asked us here, but it is plain that our company is not pleasant to him. He does his best to get rid of us—he succeeds—he plans that we shall not return. You see him alone and all that is altered. His little scheme has been in vain. We remain! He does not look at our Julie. He speaks of marriage with contempt. Yet you say he will marry her—he, a millionaire! What does it mean, Hiram?”
“The man, he is in my power,” Da Souza says in a ponderous and stealthy whisper. “I know something.”
She rose and imprinted a solemn kiss upon his forehead. There was something sacramental about the deliberate caress.
“Hiram,” she said, “you are a wonderful man!”
CHAPTER XIV
Scarlett Trent spent the first part of the morning, to which he had been looking forward so eagerly, alone in his study with locked door to keep out all intruders. He had come face to face with the first serious check in his career, and it had been dealt him too by the one man whom, of all his associates, he disliked and despised. In the half-open drawer by his side was the barrel of a loaded revolver. He drew it out, laid it on the table before him, and regarded it with moody, fascinated eyes. If only it could be safely done, if only for one moment he could find himself face to face with Da Souza in Bekwando village, where human life was cheap and the slaying of a man an incident scarcely worth noting in the day's events! The thing was easy enough there—here it was too risky. He thrust the weapon back into the drawer with a sigh of regret, just as Da Souza himself appeared upon the scene.
“You sent for me, Trent,” the latter remarked timidly. “I am quite ready to answer any more questions.”
“Answer this one, then,” was the gruff reply. “In Buckomari village before we left for England I was robbed
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