pair. "Look
here, I need your rooms."

"To be sure. I have been thinking that for some time past," said Ricardo
indifferently.

"I was mad when I listened to you. This must end!"

"I think you are mad yet," said Ricardo, not even unfolding his arms or
shifting his attitude an inch. He lowered his voice to add: "And if
I thought you had been to the police, I would tell Pedro to catch
you round the waist and break your fat neck by jerking your head
backward--snap! I saw him do it to a big buck nigger who was flourishing
a razor in front of the governor. It can be done. You hear a low crack,
that's all--and the man drops down like a limp rag."

Not even Ricardo's head, slightly inclined on the left shoulder, had
moved; but when he ceased the greenish irises which had been staring out
of doors glided into the corners of his eyes nearest to Schomberg and
stayed there with a coyly voluptuous expression.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Schomberg felt desperation, that lamentable substitute for courage,
ooze out of him. It was not so much the threat of death as the weirdly
circumstantial manner of its declaration which affected him. A mere
"I'll murder you," however ferocious in tone, and earnest, in purpose,
he could have faced; but before this novel mode of speech and procedure,
his imagination being very sensitive to the unusual, he collapsed as if
indeed his moral neck had been broken--snap!

"Go to the police? Of course not. Never dreamed of it. Too late now.
I've let myself be mixed up in this. You got my consent while I wasn't
myself. I explained it to you at the time."

Ricardo's eye glided gently off Schomberg to stare far away.

"Ay! Some trouble with a girl. But that's nothing to us."

"Naturally. What I say is, what's the good of all that savage talk to
me?" A bright argument occurred to him. "It's out of proportion; for
even if I were fool enough to go to the police now, there's nothing
serious to complain about. It would only mean deportation for you. They
would put you on board the first west-bound steamer to Singapore." He
had become animated. "Out of this to the devil," he added between his
teeth for his own private satisfaction.

Ricardo made no comment, and gave no sign of having heard a single word.
This discouraged Schomberg, who had looked up hopefully.

"Why do you want to stick here?" he cried. "It can't pay you people
to fool around like this. Didn't you worry just now about moving your
governor?