“That was all,” El Diablo said, “and it didn’t take much questioning for me to discover the way you had gone. Pedro knew the path over the mountain, but I knew it even better. I took three of my best men and started at once. The others I sent by the usual route to Jācara to intercept you if you should reach the plain before I had caught up with you.”

“Then I really hadn’t a chance?” Skye asked.

“A slender one,” El Diablo replied. “You had an hour and a half’s start, but the route over the mountains is very much slower than when one goes across the plain.”

“So your men would have cut me off!” Skye said with a little sigh. “And I thought that I was so certain to escape this time.”

He smiled at that.

“You are at least a persistent fighter.”

“Go on,” Skye pleaded. “What else?”

“There is little more to tell,” El Diablo answered. “I think you must have lost your way, the path was far worse than I anticipated. The rains in the spring had washed away the track in several places.”

“Yes, we lost our way not once but several times,” Skye said.

“I was getting worried when I saw your fire,” El Diablo went on. “We were only about a quarter of a mile away when my men drew my attention to it. I knew then what had happened, you had got lost in the darkness and been forced to camp for the night. Pedro was no use as a guide.”

Skye put up her hands to her face.

“I am ashamed of having trusted him,” she said. “Why did you have – such a man in your camp?”

“I have to make use of what material is available,” El Diablo replied. “Besides, these men are very often only children. They give what they get. Bad laws, bad rulership and corrupt Governments make bad men.”

Skye put her hands up to her throat.

“But a strangler!” she murmured.

“Tell me what he said to you,” El Diablo enquired.

She told him how Pedro had brought her the flowers and put his suggestion of how she should escape.

“It was a clever idea,” El Diablo said. “I will grant you that. It’s a pity that he had not the ability or the intelligence to carry it through.”

“I cannot bear to think – of him,” Skye cried. “When he came towards me in the cave, I thought I should go mad at the sheer beastliness of it.”

“I heard you scream,” El Diablo said. “I heard you too call out for someone.”

She looked down, her long eyelashes sweeping against her cheeks.

“Did you hear what I said?”

“So you wanted me to save you,” he said very softly.

“Who else could have done so?” she asked wonderingly.

“No one, of course,” he replied, his voice suddenly abrupt, “and once again I am a murderer.”