were
studying him.

"It will be worth four thousand pounds, in English gold," she announced.

Blake took a step or two nearer her.

"Is that the message Ottenheim told you to give me?" he demanded. His
face was red with anger.

"Then three thousand pounds," she calmly suggested, wriggling her toes
into a fallen sandal.

Blake did not deign to speak. His inarticulate grunt was one of
disgust.

"Then a thousand, in gold," she coyly intimated. She twisted about to
pull the strap of her bodice up over her white shoulder-blades. "Or I
will kill him for you for two thousand pounds in gold!"

Her eyes were as tranquil as a child's. Blake remembered that he was
in a world not his own.

"Why should I want him killed?" he inquired. He looked about for some
place to sit. There was not a chair in the room.

"Because he intends to kill _you_," answered the woman, squatting on
the orange-covered divan.

"I wish he 'd come and try," Blake devoutly retorted.

"He will not come," she told him. "It will be done from the dark. _I_
could have done it. But Ottenheim said no."

"And Ottenheim said you were to work with me in this," declared Blake,
putting two and two together.

The woman shrugged a white shoulder.

"Have you any money?" she asked. She put the question with the
artlessness of a child.

"Mighty little," retorted Blake, still studying the woman from where he
stood. He was wondering if Ottenheim had the same hold on her that the
authorities had on Ottenheim, the ex-forger who enjoyed his parole only
on condition that he remain a stool-pigeon of the high seas. He
pondered what force he could bring to bear on her, what power could
squeeze from those carmine and childish lips the information he must
have.

He knew that he could break that slim body of hers across his knee.
But he also knew that he had no way of crushing out of it the truth he
sought, the truth he must in some way obtain. The woman still squatted
on the divan, peering down at the knife scar on her arm from time to
time, studying it, as though it were an inscription.

Blake was still watching the woman when the door behind him was slowly
opened; a head was thrust in, and as quietly withdrawn again. Blake
dropped his right hand to his coat pocket and moved further along the
wall, facing the woman. There was nothing of which he stood afraid: he
merely wished to be on the safe side.

"Well, what word 'll I take back to Ottenheim