"Surely
these Arabs and half-breeds love money."
"Yes, but there's something else they hold higher, most of them, I will
say in their favour--loyalty to their own people. If this affair has to
do with Arabs, like as not we might offer all we've got without inducing
them to speak--except to tell plausible lies and send us farther along
the wrong track. It's a point of pride with these brown faces. Their own
above the Roumis, and I'm hanged if I can help respecting them for that,
lies and all."
"But why should they lie?" broke out Stephen. "What can it be to them?"
"Nothing, in all probability," Nevill tried to soothe him. "The chances
are, they've told us everything they know, in good faith, and that
they're just as much in the dark about Miss Ray's movements as we
are--without the clue we have, knowing as we do why she came to Algiers.
It's mysterious enough anyhow, what's become of her; but it's more
likely than not that she kept her own secret. You say she admitted in
her letter having heard something which she didn't mention to us when
she was at my house; so she must have got a clue, or what she thought
was a clue, between the time when we took her from the boat to the Hotel
de la Kasbah, and the time when she came to us for lunch."
"It's simply hideous!" Stephen exclaimed. "The only way I can see now is
to call in the police. They must find out where that cab came from and
where it took Miss Ray.
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