In the darkness of the alley he paused again.  A cool breeze fanned his cheeks, and the effect of it was to free him of the horror that had gripped him in his fight with the yellow men.  Again the calmness with which he had faced Kao possessed him.  The Chinaman was dead.  He was sure of that.  And for him there was not a minute to lose.

After all, it was his fate.  The game had been played, and he had lost.  There was one thing left undone, one play Conniston would still make, if he were there.  And he, too, would make it.  It was no longer necessary for him to give himself up to McDowell, for Kao was dead, and Miriam Kirkstone was saved.  It was still right and just for him to fight for his life.  But Mary Josephine must know from him.  It was the last square play he could make.

No one saw him as he made his way through alleys to the outskirts of the town.  A quarter of an hour later he came up the slope to the Shack.  It was lighted, and the curtains were raised to brighten his way up the hill.  Mary Josephine was waiting for him.

Again there came over him the strange and deadly calmness with which he had met the tragedy of that night.  He had tried to wipe the blood from his face, but it was still there when he entered and faced Mary Josephine.  The wounds made by the razor-like nails of his assailants were bleeding; he was hatless, his hair was disheveled, and his throat and a part of his chest were bare where his clothes had been torn away.  As Mary Josephine came toward him, her arms reaching out to him, her face dead white, he stretched out a restraining hand, and said,

“Please wait, Mary Josephine!”

Something stopped her—­the strangeness of his voice, the terrible hardness of his face, gray and blood-stained, the something appalling and commanding in the way he had spoken.  He passed her quickly on his way to the telephone.  Her lips moved; she tried to speak; one of her hands went to her throat.  He was calling Miriam Kirkstone’s number!  And now she saw that his hands, too, were bleeding.  There came the murmur of a voice in the telephone.  Someone answered.  And then she heard him say,

“Shan Tung is dead!”

That was all.  He hung up the receiver and turned toward her.  With a little cry she moved toward him.

“Derry—­Derry—­”

He evaded her and pointed to the big chair in front of the fireplace.  “Sit down, Mary Josephine.”

She obeyed him.  Her face was whiter than he had thought a living face could be, And then, from the beginning to the end, he told her everything.  Mary Josephine made no sound, and in the big chair she seemed to crumple smaller and smaller as he confessed the great lie to her, from the hour Conniston and he had traded identities in the little cabin on the Barren.  Until he died he knew she would haunt him as he saw her there for the last time—­her dead-white face, her great eyes, her voiceless lips, her two little hands clutched at her breast as she listened to the story of the great lie and his love for her.