"No, no," she murmured, and the anguish in her voice would have aroused sympathy in a nature far less impressionable than Royson's. "If you could help me, and all of us, try and find Baron von Kerber, and tell him--tell him--I sent you with the message that there is one here whom he must not meet. Oh, what shall I say to make him understand?" "May I tell him that Alfieri is in Massowah?" Dick almost regretted the words when he witnessed their tremendous effect. She was on the very brink of hysteria, and the suddenness of her collapse was painful. "You--you, too, know Alfieri?" she gasped, looking at him in a very agony of terror. "I am sorry if I have added to your alarm. I did not mean to do that, Alfieri is unknown to me, but I heard his name at Marseilles, when he attacked the Baron." The pity he could not withhold seemed to give her new strength. "An attack!" She whispered. "At Marseilles! Oh, why was I not told? But you will find him, at the Governor's house! It is not far--on the seaward point.... The hotel people will supply a guide.... Baron von Kerber and Alfieri must not meet here. If they do meet, we shall lose everything.... Tell the Baron to go on board the yacht, no matter what Mr. Fenshawe says. Do you understand? It is a matter of life and death. Slip out into a back street, so that Alfieri may not see you.... I will watch from here. Go, for Heaven's sake. Let nothing delay you." She was incapable of further explanation. Dick feared she would faint if he waited another second. Hence, when Irene turned to say that Mr. Fenshawe and the Baron appeared to be paying a prolonged visit to the Governor, she found that Mrs. Haxton was sitting alone, with her veiled face propped on her hands, while, so malicious was fate's decree once more to Royson, that he was then hastening through malodorous lanes and crowded slums in order to save from threatened peril the very man whose downfall offered the only visible means by which he could bend his own frail fortunes in the direction that looked best to him. CHAPTER VIII MASSOWAH ASSERTS ITSELF Royson knew not one word of Arabic. His Italian was of a rudimentary type, based on some acquaintance with Latin, eked out by a few phrases gleaned from books of travel. The polite hotel manager's French was only a shade more fluent. Consequently, the latter told Mulai Hamed, deputy assistant hall-porter, that the Effendi wished to be conducted to Government House with the utmost secrecy, thus twisting Dick's simple request, that the guide should avoid the main streets into a mysterious demand which an Eastern mind could not fail to embroider with intrigue.