Page:Harold Lamb--The House of the Falcon.djvu/28

 and was looking at them fixedly, his brown face serious.

"Eh, why—he was stabbed four times about the heart, as dead as Mahomet"

"Not Jain Ali Beg." The card player shook his head impatiently. "The man in Kashgar."

The stranger pronounced the native names in a certain sonorous fashion quite different from the flat phrases of Whittaker.

"Oh, the hunter." Whittaker rallied to the defense of his story. "Well, there's not much doubt that he is dead, after all that. He was never seen around there again, of course. You see there was something spooky about that caravan. You don't think he isn't dead, do you?"

The card player smiled. "A case of corpus delicti is sometimes difficult to prove," he observed. And now his glance rested on the girl, keenly appraising, as if he were probing for what might be in her thoughts. Then his smile changed and he stood up, his dark eyes intent upon her. Few men failed to render tribute to the beauty of Edith Rand. His brows raised tentatively at Whittaker.

"Pardon me," the globe-trotter obeyed the signal with some reluctance. He felt that the spell of his story had been shattered. "Permit me. Miss Rand, to introduce Edouard Monsey."

With a ready courtesy the newcomer bowed over Edith's hand. In spite of his almost perfect English the girl felt that he was of foreign birth. She was vaguely surprised that Monsey should be an acquaintance of Whittaker—although her companion seemed to know everybody. For the past hour she had