The Rajah is the very man, if only I can get him interested in my
project. Will you help me?"
"As I have gone so far I might as well go on," she assented indifferently.
"Thanks. Then there is something else--I want to marry Lois Caruthers."
Beatrice started and looked up at him as though she thought he might be
joking. His face had indeed undergone a change, but there was something
stern, resolute, almost brutal in the hard-set profile.
"Indeed? Will that not be more difficult? There is Stafford in the way,
and Stafford--"
"Stafford must be cleared out of the way," he interrupted, with a cool
decision which his expression partly belied. "I believe she is fond of him
and he of her in a Platonic sort of fashion which might lead to marriage
and might not. He is not the danger. There is a fellow, Nicholson,
though--"
He stopped short and seemed for an instant to be plunged in his own
thoughts.
"Who is this Nicholson?" she asked curiously. "I have heard his name
constantly since I have been here. People talk of him as though he were a
demigod. Why are you afraid of him?"
"Just because of his godlike qualities," Travers explained, with a laugh.
"In earlier ages, no doubt, he would have been a god and among the natives
he is one. In reality, he is an ordinary mortal blessed with an
extraordinary influence. I believe he is a captain in some native regiment
on the frontiers and has done grand work there.
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