Ooma paid no heed to their amazement. He staggered unsteadily to a chair
and sank into it limply. It was the chair which David Hume occupied when
he slept, and dreamed. Not even Winter saw cause for suspicion in the act.
Ooma was dying. His yellow skin was now green. His lips were white. His
whole frame was sinking. At this phase he became a Japanese, and lost all
likeness to the Frazers.
He continued, with an odd cackle:
"I kept up the error. I demanded money as my right, and from his words I
gathered that the Frazers had been at their old tricks and defrauded
another relative."
Robert started.
"Do you hear?" he murmured to Brett. "That accounts for Alan's strange
reception of me the same day."
Brett held up a warning hand. Ooma was still talking.
"I taunted him with thriving on the plunder of his own people. That made
him furious. He raved about the world being in league against him. The
only relative he loved, one who was more than brother, had stolen the
woman he wished to marry; his sister was a living lie; his cousin a
blackmailer. I laughed. 'Do you disown your sister, then?' I asked. He
took from his breast-pocket some papers--you will find them there, on the
table--and told me, in great anger, that he possessed proof that she was
not his sister. I was cooler than he, and saw the value of this admission
I pretended to go away, but hid among the trees and saw him walk about the
library for nearly an hour.
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