We Japanese fear neither.
For I am a Japanese, and I am proud of it, although my ancestor was David
Hume of Glen Tochan, who fought and killed the man who robbed his father."
"But how and why did you kill Capella?" asked Brett.
"I saw him in the station at London. He followed me. I puzzled him, I
suppose. He perceived the likeness between me and my dear cousins. We are
like one another, are we not, we Hume-Frazers?"
He laughed mirthlessly, and stared at David and Robert alternately. Winter
broke in with a hasty question:
"If he is speaking the truth about the snake poison, shouldn't we send for
a doctor?"
No one had thought of this previously. Brett reproached himself for his
forgetfulness. So strange are our civilised notions that we strive to save
a man's life in order to hang him by due process at law.
It was Ooma who answered.
"Doctor!" he cried. "Bring him! Bring the whole College of Surgeons. They
can watch me die, and tell you learnedly why the blood curdles and the
heart refuses to act, but not all their science can beat the venom of the
little karait. It is an Indian snake, more deadly than the cobra, with
mightier tooth than the tiger. I meant to use that syringe on the whole
cursed brood of Frazers in this country. No one would have known what
happened to them. But look you, Fate is too powerful.
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