Rotil strode to the door and motioned Kit to enter, then he closed both doors and gave no heed to Perez, crouched there like a chained coyote in a trap.
"Come down!" he said again. "You are in league with hell to know of that. I never gave it to you! Come down! I meant to tell after he had finished with Conrad--I mean to tell!"
"He waited too long, and spoke too much," she said to Rotil. "Keep watch on him, and let the Americano give help here."
Kit mounted the step beside her, and at her gesture took hold of the frame on one side. She found a wedge of wood at the other side and drew it out. The loosened frame was lifted out by Kit and carried down the three steps; it was a panel a little over two feet in width and four in height.
"Set it aside, and watch José Perez while General Rotil looks within," she said evenly.
Rotil glanced at Perez scowling black hate at her, and then turned to Jocasta who held out the candle.
"It is for you to see,--you and no other," she said. "You have saved a woman he would have traded as a slave, and I give you more than a slave's ransom."
He took the candle and his eyes suddenly flamed with exultation as her meaning came to him.
"_Jocasta!_" he muttered as if scarce believing, and then he mounted the step, halted an instant in the panel of shadow, and, holding the candle over his head, he leaned forward and descended on the other side of the wall.
"You damned she-wolf of the hills!" growled Perez with the concentrated hate of utter failure in his voice. "I fed you, and my money covered your nakedness, and now you put a knife in my neck and go back to cattle of the range for a mate! You,--without shame or soul!"
"That is true," she said coldly. "You killed a soul in the _casita_ of the oleanders, José Perez, and it was a dead woman you and the German chained to be buried in the desert. But even the dead come back to help friends who are faithful, José,--and I am as the dead who walk."
She did not look at him as she spoke, but sank on her knees before the dark canvas where only the faint golden halo gave evidence of some incarnated holiness portrayed there. Her voice was low and even, and the sadness of it thrilled Kit. He thought of music of sweet chords, and a broken string vibrating, for the hopelessness in her voice held a certain fateful finality, and her delicate dark loveliness----