not change, but there was a sound
in his voice like the clank of broken iron.

"They've caught Hiangeli," she said.

"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.

"Tell me all about it, my child."

"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."

Then the storm broke forth.

"But it must not come to an end!" she burst out violently. "I can't
live without it!"

The man looked at her reflectively.

"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!"

He shook his head.

"We can't do any more of it," he said inflexibly. "Not for a year, at
the outside."