It
was even more than a probability. It was a grim necessity. To let
him live and escape would be fatal to Black Roger.
From back of these convictions, riding over them as if to
demoralize any coherence and logic that might go with the evidence
he was building up, came question after question, pounding at him
one after the other, until his mind became more than ever a
whirling chaos of uncertainty. If St. Pierre was Black Roger, why
would he confess to that fact simply to pay a wager? What reason
could he have for letting him live at all? Why had not Bateese
killed him? Why had Marie-Anne nursed him back to life? His mind
shot to the white strip of sand in which he had nearly died. That,
at least, was convincing. Learning in some way that he was after
Black Roger, they had attempted to do away with him there. But if
that were so, why was it Bateese and Black Roger's wife and the
Indian Nepapinas had risked so much to make him live, when if they
had left him where he had fallen he would have died and caused
them no trouble?
There was something exasperatingly uncertain and illogical about
it all. Was it possible that St. Pierre Boulain was playing a huge
joke on him? Even that was inconceivable.
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