"You are an extraordinary _hombre_, Sault. Merville says you have the _vocabulaire_--that is English or something like it--of an educated man. But to return--do you realize how incurious I am? For example, I have never once asked you, in all our years of knowing one another, why you killed that man?" "Which man?" Moropulos laughed softly. "Butcher! Have you killed so many? I refer to the victim for whose destruction the French government sent you to New Caledonia." Sault stood leaning his back against the table his eyes fixed on the floor. "He was a bad man," he said simply, "I tried to find another way of--stopping him, but he was clever and he had powerful friends, who were government officials. So I killed him. He hired two men to wait for me one night. I was staying at a little hotel on the Plassy Road. They tried to beat me because I had reported this man. Then I knew that the only thing I could do was to kill him. I should do it again." Moropulos surveyed him from under his lowered brows. "You were lucky to escape 'the widow', my friend," he said, but Ambrose shook his head. "Nobody was executed in those days; capital punishment had not been abolished, but the Senate refused to vote the executioner his salary. It had the same effect. I was lucky to go to New Caledonia. Cayenne is worse." "How long did you serve?" "Eight years and seven months," was the reply. Moropulos made a little grimace. "I would sooner die," he said and lit another cigarette. Deep in thought he smoked until Ambrose made a move to pick up his Crooke's glasses. "Don't work. I hate to see you--and hate worse to hear you. What do you think of Morelle?" "I don't know him; I have heard about him. He is not a good man." "What is a good man?" Moropulos demanded contemptuously. "He is a lover of ladies, who isn't? He is a cur too. Steppe walks on him. He is scared of Steppe but then everybody is, except you and I." Ambrose smiled. "Well, perhaps I am--he is such a gorilla. But you are not." "Why should I be? I am stronger than he." Moropulos looked at the man's bare arms. "Yes--I suppose it comes down to that. The basis of all fear, is physical. When will the safe be finished?" "In a week. I am assembling the lock at home. I shall make it work to five letters. The only word I can spell. I shouldn't have known that, but I heard a man spell it once--on the ship that brought me home. He was a steerage passenger and he used to take his little child on the deck when it was fine, and the little one used to read Scripture stories to him. When she came to a hard word, he spelled it. I heard one word and never forgot it." "I'll be glad when the thing is finished," the Greek meditated. "We have a whole lot of papers that we never want to see the light of day, Steppe and I. We could destroy them, but they may be useful, correspondence that it isn't safe to keep and it isn't wise to burn. You are an ingenious devil!"