Part 60 (1/2)

”You gendarme,” he cried in a menacing voice, ”you think you shall follow in my track. Yes? I blow your d.a.m.n head off if you stir before the hour.... After that--well, follow and be d.a.m.n!”

Even as he spoke he stepped outside and slammed the door; and Darragh and Stormont leaped for it. Then the loud detonation of Quintana's rifle was echoed by the splintering rip of bullets tearing through the closed door; and both men halted in the face of the leaden hail.

Eve ran to the pantry window and saw Quintana in somebody's stolen lumber-sledge, lash a big pair of horses to a gallop and go floundering past into the Ghost Lake road.

As he sped by in a whirl of snow he fired five times at the house, then, rising and swinging his whip, he flogged the frantic horses into the woods.

In the dining room, Stormont, red with rage and shame, and having found his rifle in the corridor outside Eve's bedroom, was trying to open the shutters for a shot; and Darragh, empty-handed, searched the house frantically for a weapon.

Eve, terribly excited, came from the pantry:

”He's gone!” she cried furiously. ”He's in somebody's lumber-sledge with a pair of horses and he's driving west like the devil!”

Stormont ran to the tap-room telephone, cranked it, and warned the constabulary at Five Lakes.

”Good G.o.d!” he exclaimed, turning to Darragh, scarlet with mortification, ”what a ghastly business! I never dreamed he was within miles of Clinch's! It's the most shameful thing that ever happened to me----”

”What could anybody do under that rifle?” said Eve hotly. ”That beast would have murdered the first person who stirred!”

Darragh, exasperated and dreadfully humiliated, looked miserably at his brand-new wife.

Eve and Stormont also looked at her. She had come forward from the rear of the stairway where Quintana had brutally driven her. Now she stood with one hand on the empty leather jewel case, looking at everybody out of pretty, bewildered eyes.

To Darragh, in a perplexed, unsteady voice: ”Is it the same bandit who robbed us before?”

”Yes; Quintana,” he said wretchedly. Rage began to redden his features.

”Ricca,” he said, ”I promised I'd find your jewels.... I promise you again that I'll never drop this business until your gems--and the Flaming Jewel--are in your possession----”

”But, Jim----”

”I swear it!” he exclaimed violently. ”I'm not such a stupid fool as I seem----”

”Dear!” she protested excitedly, ”you _have_ done what you promised. My gems _are_ in my possession--I believe----”

She caught up the emblazoned case, stripped out the first tray, then the second, and flung them aside. Then, searching with the delicate tip of her forefinger in the empty case, she suddenly pressed the bottom hard,--thumb, middle finger and little finger forming the three apexes of an equilateral triangle.

There came a clear, tiny sound like the ringing of the alarm in a repeating watch. Very gently the false bottom of the case detached itself and came away in the palm of her hand.

And there, each embedded in its own shaped compartment of chamois, lay the Esthonian jewels--the true ones--deep hidden, always doubly guarded by two sets of perfect imitations lining the two visible trays above.

And, in the centre, blazed the Erosite gem--the magnificent Flaming Jewel, a glory of living, blinding fire.

n.o.body stirred or spoke. Darragh blinked at the crystalline blaze as though stunned.

Then the young girl who had once been Her Serene Highness Theodorica, Grand d.u.c.h.ess of Esthonia, looked up at her brand-new husband and laughed.

”Did you really suppose it was these that brought me across the ocean?