"Romney, you bring me back the old romance of America—" "Let us think.... Have the police been notified in regard to Minglapo?" "No." "If the police were called here, the work of any secret agent in our case might be complicated—" "Vulgar detentions—a day of questions—a day lost—our enemy to organise. Remember, these killers are ready to die themselves—" "Then let us go forth now—" "Go forth into China?" The question came mildly. "Any rickshaw coolie—" "To the American Consulate—" Romney interrupted. The answer remained in Romney’s mind as one of the high moments of life. "I would not accept sanctuary from a country from which I have withdrawn my allegiance." "Then I’ll stay with you here, but I think we had better join the woman—" "Yes—" "Just a minute—wait," Romney whispered, touching the other’s sleeve. "Let them think that the tea did it. Walk heavily, on my arm, through the halls. Let your legs reel a bit. It will give us time—" "Yes, it might give us time—" The utter hopelessness of Nifton Bend’s repetition of his words brought to Romney something like an expression of Fate itself. The Hunchback, in accepting China, had accepted the code of her servants. The condemned never resist death. But Romney did not share the attitude. "Listen," he added. "They will be watching. They will think you dying from the poison—if they really fixed this tea. They will leave you alone in your rooms—possibly for hours. I’ll go out and get your young men together. Don’t you see? I am one of them. You are the Cause while you live. We’ll come again and take you out—" The expression upon the Hunchback’s face deepened with pain. "I love the thought. It is brave and strong—as young men are. But it would mean the deaths of all who came—yours and the others. My young men cannot be spared. It would not save me. We are in China.... There is this that you can do—I was almost forgetting. Here are two packets of papers. It is the whole affair that you hated so—the plan and all, in case of aggression by Japan. There is only one safe place for these, in case our cause is lost—the bottom of the sea. Certain of these parchments are fire and acid-proof. It’s the work of years of Ti Kung and others. Japan would use them quickly enough against China. You must take care to prevent all that. Don’t dare to die with these papers on your person, Romney.... And now may we go to her?" *3* There was a smile back of the tortured eyes of the Hunchback as he reeled through the hallway, holding heavily to Romney’s arm. The latter caught a trace of the humour of the thing. He could not have reached this smile had it not been for the days in the Gobi. A man who had had his own loved one torn away, who has been forced to take his faith from the substance and place it upon the spirit of things, does not easily find himself denied a laugh afterward, when the world is at its worst.