“It was locked?” she repeated.
“I locked it,” he told her. “It
is locked now, securely. I have been searching
in your room for something which I did not find.
I think that you had better give it to me. It
will save trouble.”
“Are you mad?” she demanded breathlessly.
“Do I seem so?” he replied. “There
is no person more sane than I. I require from you
the formula of the new explosive, which you stole in
Henry’s restaurant eleven days ago.”
The sense of mystery passed. It was simply trouble
of the ordinary sort from an unexpected source.
“Dear me!” she murmured. “Every
one seems interested in my little adventure.
How did you hear about it?”
“I destroyed the cable telling me of all that
happened only a few minutes ago,” he explained.
“It was the foolish talk of the young inventor
which gave his secret to the world to scramble for.”
“It was very clever of your informant,”
she remarked, “to suggest that I was the fortunate
thief. Why not Oscar Fischer? It was his
plot, not mine.”
The eyes of the little Japanese seemed suddenly to
narrow. He realised quite well that she was talking
simply to gain time.
“Madam,” he insisted, “the formula.
It is for my country, and for my country I would risk
much.”
“I do not doubt it,” she replied; “but
if I hold it, I hold it for my country, too, and there
is nothing you would risk for Japan from which I should
shrink for America.”
He laid his hands upon the table. She turned
her ring and clenched her hand. She could see
his spring coming, realised in those few seconds that
here was an opponent of more desperate and subtle calibre
than Joseph. Whether her wits might have failed
her, fate remained her friend. There was a knock
at the door.
“You hear?” she cried breathlessly.
“There is some one there. Shall I call
out?”
His hands and knee were gone from the table.
He was once more his old self, so completely the servant
that for a moment even Pamela was puzzled. It
seemed as though the events of the last few seconds
might have been part of a disordered dream. Nikasti
played to the cue of her fevered question and entirely
ignored them. He opened the door with a respectful
flourish—and John Lutchester walked in.
Pamela’s first shock of surprise did not readily
pass. In the first place, John Lutchester’s
appearance in America at all was entirely unexpected.
In the second, by what possible means could he have
arrived at this precise and psychological moment?
“You!” she exclaimed, a little helplessly.
“Mr. Lutchester!”
He smiled as he shook hands. Nikasti had slipped
noiselessly from the room. Pamela made no effort
to detain him. She had a curious feeling that
the things which had passed between them concerned
their two selves only. So had no desire whatever
to hand him over to retributive justice.
