“That is the reason, John Keith.  Peter Kirkstone, her brother, is a murderer, a cold-blooded murderer.  And only Miriam Kirkstone and your humble servant, Prince Kao, know his secret.  And to buy my secret, to save his life, the golden-headed goddess is almost ready to give herself to me—­almost, John Keith.  She will decide tonight, when you go to her.  She will come.  Yes, she will come tonight.  I do not fear.  I have prepared for her the candles, the bridal dais, the nuptial supper.  Oh, she will come.  For if she does not, if she fails, with tomorrow’s dawn Peter Kirkstone and John Keith both go to the hangman!”

Keith, in spite of the horror that had come over him, felt no excitement.  The whole situation was clear to him now, and there was nothing to be gained by argument, no possibility of evasion.  Kao held the winning hand, the hand that put him back to the wall in the face of impossible alternatives.  These alternatives flashed upon him swiftly.  There were two and only two—­flight, and alone, without Mary Josephine; and betrayal of Miriam Kirkstone.  Just how Kao schemed that he should accomplish that betrayal, he could not guess.

His voice, like his face, was cold and strange when it answered the Chinaman; it lacked passion; there was no emphasis, no inflection that gave to one word more than to another.  And Keith, listening to his own voice, knew what it meant.  He was cold inside, cold as ice, and his eyes were on the dais, the sacrificial altar that Kao had prepared, waiting in the candleglow.  On the floor of that dais was a great splash of dull-gold altar cloth, and it made him think of Miriam Kirkstone’s unbound and disheveled hair strewn in its outraged glory over the thing Kao had prepared for her.

“I see.  It is a trade, Kao.  You are offering me my life in return for Miriam Kirkstone.”

“More than that, John Keith.  Mine is the small price.  And yet it is great to me, for it gives me the golden goddess.  But is she more to me than Derwent Conniston’s sister may be to you?  Yes, I am giving you her, and I am giving you your life, and I am giving Peter Kirkstone his life—­all for one.”

“For one,” repeated Keith.

“Yes, for one.”

“And I, John Keith, in some mysterious way unknown to me at present, am to deliver Miriam Kirkstone to you?”

“Yes.”

“And yet, if I should kill you, now—­where you sit—­”

Kao shrugged his slim shoulders, and Keith heard that soft, gurgling laugh that McDowell had said was like the splutter of oil.

“I have arranged.  It is all in writing.  If anything should happen to me, there are messengers who would carry it swiftly.  To harm me would be to seal your own doom.  Besides, you would not leave here alive.  I am not afraid.”

“How am I to deliver Miriam Kirkstone to you?”