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Page 56
Dumbly Keith followed through the dark corridor, into the big room
mellow with candle-glow, back to the table with its mocking tea-urn and
chinaware. He felt a thing like clammy sweat on his back. He sat down.
And Kao sat opposite him again.
"That is the reason, John Keith. Peter Kirkstone, her brother, is a
murderer, a cold-blooded murderer. And only Miriam Kirkstone and your
humble servant, Prince Kao, know his secret. And to buy my secret, to
save his life, the golden-headed goddess is almost ready to give
herself to me--almost, John Keith. She will decide tonight, when you go
to her. She will come. Yes, she will come tonight. I do not fear. I
have prepared for her the candles, the bridal dais, the nuptial supper.
Oh, she will come. For if she does not, if she fails, with tomorrow's
dawn Peter Kirkstone and John Keith both go to the hangman!"
Keith, in spite of the horror that had come over him, felt no
excitement. The whole situation was clear to him now, and there was
nothing to be gained by argument, no possibility of evasion. Kao held
the winning hand, the hand that put him back to the wall in the face of
impossible alternatives. These alternatives flashed upon him swiftly.
There were two and only two--flight, and alone, without Mary Josephine;
and betrayal of Miriam Kirkstone. Just how Kao schemed that he should
accomplish that betrayal, he could not guess.
His voice, like his face, was cold and strange when it answered the
Chinaman; it lacked passion; there was no emphasis, no inflection that
gave to one word more than to another. And Keith, listening to his own
voice, knew what it meant. He was cold inside, cold as ice, and his
eyes were on the dais, the sacrificial altar that Kao had prepared,
waiting in the candleglow. On the floor of that dais was a great splash
of dull-gold altar cloth, and it made him think of Miriam Kirkstone's
unbound and disheveled hair strewn in its outraged glory over the thing
Kao had prepared for her.
"I see. It is a trade, Kao. You are offering me my life in return for
Miriam Kirkstone."
"More than that, John Keith. Mine is the small price. And yet it is
great to me, for it gives me the golden goddess. But is she more to me
than Derwent Conniston's sister may be to you? Yes, I am giving you
her, and I am giving you your life, and I am giving Peter Kirkstone his
life--all for ONE."
"For one," repeated Keith.
"Yes, for one."
"And I, John Keith, in some mysterious way unknown to me at present, am
to deliver Miriam Kirkstone to you?"
"Yes."
"And yet, if I should kill you, now--where you sit--"
Kao shrugged his slim shoulders, and Keith heard that soft, gurgling
laugh that McDowell had said was like the splutter of oil.
"I have arranged. It is all in writing. If anything should happen to
me, there are messengers who would carry it swiftly. To harm me would be
to seal your own doom. Besides, you would not leave here alive. I am
not afraid."
"How am I to deliver Miriam Kirkstone to you?"
Kao leaned forward, his fingers interlacing eagerly. "Ah, NOW you have
asked the question, John Keith! And we shall be friends, great friends,
for you see with the eyes of wisdom. It will be easy, so easy that you
will wonder at the cheapness of the task. Ten days ago Miriam Kirkstone
was about to pay my price. And then you came. From that moment she saw
you in McDowell's office, there was a sudden change. Why? I don't know.
Perhaps because of that thing you call intuition but to which we give a
greater name. Perhaps only because you were the man who had run down
her father's murderer. I saw her that afternoon, before you went up at
night. Ah, yes, I could see, I could understand the spark that had
begun to grow in her, hope, a wild, impossible hope, and I prepared for
it by leaving you my message. I went away. I knew that in a few days
all that hope would be centered in you, that it would live and die in
you, that in the end it would be your word that would bring her to me.
And that word you must speak tonight. You must go to her, hope-broken.
You must tell her that no power on earth can save her, and that Kao
waits to make her a princess, that tomorrow will be too late, that
TONIGHT must the bargain be closed. She will come. She will save her
brother from the hangman, and you, in bringing her, will save John
Keith and keep Derwent Conniston's sister. Is it not a great reward for
the little I am asking?"
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