Part 14 (1/2)
”Wait a minute--don't go so fast. Start at the beginning. What's your name?”
”Oliver Mercer.”
His face grew suddenly grave. ”My brother was killed up there in Wyoming--that's how I happened to go there in the first place.”
”Mercer!” I exclaimed.
He started. ”Yes--why? You don't think you know me, by any chance, do you?”
”No, but I knew your brother--that is, I know Bob Trevor, who was with him when he was killed. He's one of my best friends.”
The young fellow extended his hand. ”A friend of Bob Trevor's--away off here! Don't it get you, just?”
Miela interrupted us here to translate to her mother and Anina what he said.
Mercer went on: ”The a.s.sumption is, you people here are not working with this gang of crooks I got away from--this Tao? Am I right in thinking so?”
”You're certainly right, that far,” I laughed.
I felt, more than I can say, a great sense of relief, a lessening of the tension, the unconscious strain I had been under, at this swift, jovial conversation with another human of my own kind.
”Yes, you're right on that. This Tao and I are not exactly on the same side. I'll tell you all about it in a minute.”
”Then, we're working together?”
”Yes.”
”Well, all I'm working for is to get back home where I came from.”
”You won't be when you hear all I've got to say.”
He started at that; then, with sudden change of thought, his eyes turned to Anina. The girl blushed under his admiring gaze.
”Say, she's a little beauty, isn't she? Who is she?”
”She's my sister,” I said, smiling.
For once he was too dumfounded to reply.
Miela had finished her translation now, and, as she turned back to us, spoke in English for the first time during the conversation.
”Do you know why it is they brought you here from the Twilight Country?”
she asked Mercer.
This gave him another shock. ”Why, I--no. That is--say, how do you happen to talk English? Is it one of your languages here, by any chance?”
Miela laughed gayly.
”Only we three, in all this world, speak English. I know it because--”