"You are very late, my child," he said, in a gently benevolent tone. His voice was rich and sonorous.
"Safe?" His dark, hawk-like face did not change, but there was a sound in his voice like the clank of broken iron.
"Ah!" He carefully folded the manuscript between two protecting sheets of blotting-paper and placed it in the drawer of his table. His hands shook as if with ague, but his voice was as perfectly composed as his face when he spoke again.
"They got him in the compound today, as he was putting the parcel through. He has confessed as much as he knows about your son going to the kraal, and the blue beads, and the old house in the Malay compound where he was paid. They have now set a trap-parcel of stones and are sitting in wait to catch the confederate." She sank down in a chair opposite to him and leaned her elbows on the table. "To catch me," she said slowly.
He looked at her keenly. Her face was deadly pale, but there was no trace of fear in it. Whatever Rosanne Ozanne may have been, she was no coward. Neither was the man opposite her.
"Ah! They have no inkling, of course, that it was you who met Hiangeli and paid him?"
"No; he was not able to tell them any more than that it was a white boy." She added, with the ghost of a smile, "A thin, white boy, in a mask and an overcoat."
"Well, that's all right. They won't catch you, and they won't catch me, and Saul is safe in Amsterdam. Luck is on our side, as she always is on the side of good players. Hiangeli must foot the bill, because he played badly."
Rosanne sat listening. It was plain that Hiangeli's fate was a matter of indifference to her, but some storm was brewing behind her smouldering eyes. Ravenal went on calmly:
"It's been a good game while it lasted. The pity is that it must come to an end."
"But it must not come to an end!" she burst out violently. "I can't live without it!"
"You're a great sport. I've never known a woman with finer nerve. But, just the same, the game has got to come to an end."
"Game! You don't understand. It is meat and drink to me. I _must_ have diamonds." She sounded like a woman pleading for some drug to deaden pain, memory, and conscience. Her voice was wild; she put out her hands to him in an imploring gesture. "I have given up everything for them--everything!"