He knew Quintana and his gang were here to find the Flaming Jewel.
Had he not encountered Quintana, his own errand had been the same. For Smith had started for Clinch’s prepared to reveal himself to Stormont, and then, masked to the eyes — and to save Eve from a broken heart, and Clinch from States Prison — he had meant to rob the girl at pistol-point.
It was the only way to save Clinch, the only way to save the pride of his blindly loyal girl. For the arrest of Clinch meant ruin to both, and Smith realised it thoughtfully.
* * * * *
A slight sound form one of the out-houses — a sort of wagon-shed — attracted his attention. Through the frost-highlighted rag-weeds a faint glow appeared in the shed. There was a crackling noise. The glow grew pinker.
* * * * *
III
Inside Clinch’s home Eve awoke with a start. Her ears were filled with a strange, rushing, cracking noise. A rosy glare danced and shook outside her windows.
As she sprang to the floor on bandaged feet, a shrill scream burst out of the ruddy darkness — unearthly, horrible; and there came a thunderous battering from the burn.
The girl tore open her bedroom door. “Jack!” she cried in a terrified voice. “The barn’s on fire!”
“Good Good!” he said, “ — my horse!”
He had already sprung from his chair outside her door. Now he ran downstairs, and she heard bolt and chain clash at the kitchen door and his spurred boots land on the porch.
“Oh,” she whimpered, snatching a blanket wrapper from a peg and struggling into it. “Oh, the poor house! Jack! Jack! I’m coming to help! Don’t risk your life! I’m coming — I’m coming — —”
Terror clutched her as she stumbled downstairs on bandaged feet.
As she reached the door a great flare of light almost blinded her.
“Jack!”
And at the same instant she saw him struggling with three masked men in the glare of the wagon-shed afire.
His rifle stood in the corridor outside her door. With one bound she was on the stairs again. There came the crash and splinter of wood and glass from the kitchen, and a man with a handkerchief over his face caught her on the landing.
Twice she wrenched herself loose and her fingers almost touched Stormont’s rifle; she fought like a cornered lynx, tore the handkerchief from her assailant’s face, recognised Quintana, hurled her very body at him, eyes flaming, small teeth bared.
Two other men laid hold. In another moment she had tripped Quintana, and all four fell, rolling over and over down the short flight of stairs, landing in the kitchen, still fighting.
Here, in darkness, she wriggled out, somehow, leaving her blanket wrapped in their clutches. In another instant she was up the stairs again, only to discover that the rifle was gone.
The red glare from the wagon-house lighted her bedroom; she sprang inside and bolted the door.
Her chamois jacket with its loops full of cartridges hung on a peg. She got into it, seized her rifle and ran to the window just as two masked men, pushing Stormont before them, entered the house by the kitchen way.
Her own door was resounding with kicks and blows, shaking, shivering under the furious impact of boot and rifle-butt.
She ran to the bed, thrust her hand under the pillow, pulled out the case containing the Flaming Jewel, and placed it in the breast pocket of her shooting jacket.
Again she crept to the window. Only the wagon-house was burning. Somebody, however, had led Stormont’s horse from the barn, and had tied it to a tree at a safe distance. It stood there, trembling, its beautiful, nervous head turned toward the burning building.
The blows upon her bedroom door had ceased; there came a loud trampling, the sound of excited voices; Quintana’s sarcastic tones, clear, dominant:
“Dios! The police! Why you bring me this gendarme? What am I to do with a gentleman of the Constabulary, eh? Do you think I am fool enough to cut his throat? Well, Senor Gendarme, what are you doing here in the Dump of Clinch?”
Then Stormont’s voice, clear and quiet: “What are you doing here? If you’ve a quarrel with Clinch, he’s not here. There’s only a young girl in this house.”
“So?” said Quintana. “Well, that is what I expec’, my frien’. It is thees lady upon whom I do myse’f the honour to call!”
Eve, listening, heard Stormont’s rejoinder, still, calm, and very grave:
“The man who lays a finger on that young girl had better be dead. He’s as good as dead the moment he touches her. There won’t be a chance for him. … Nor for any of you, if you harm her.”
“Calm youse’f, my frien’,” said Quintana. “I demand of thees young lady only that she return to me the property of which I have been rob by Monsieur Clinch.”
“I knew nothing of any theft. Nor does she — —”
“Pardon: Senor Clinch knows, and I know.” His tone changed, offensively: “Senor Gendarme, am I permit to understan’ that you are a frien’ of thees young lady? — a heart-frien’, per’aps — —”
“I am her friend,” said Stormont bluntly.
“Ah,” said Quintana, “then you shall persuade her to return to me thees packet of which Monsieur Clinch has rob me.”
There was a short silence, then Quintana’s voice again:
“I know thees packet is conceel in thees house. Peaceably, if possible,
I would recover my property. … If she refuse — —”
Another pause.
“Well?” inquired Stormont, coolly.
“Ah! It is ver’ painful to say. Alas, Senor Gendarme, I mus’ have my property. … If she refuse, then I mus’ sever one of her pretty fingers. … An’ if she still refuse — I sever her pretty fingers one by one, until — —”
“You know what would happen to you?” interrupted Stormont, in a voice that quivered in spite of himself.
“I take my chance. Senor Gendarme, she is within that room. If you are her frien’, you shall advise her to return to me my property.”
After another silence.
“Eve!” he called sharply.
She placed her lips to the door: “Yes, Jack.”
He said: “There are five masked men out here who say that Clinch robbed them and they are here to recover their property. … Do you know anything about this?”
“I know they lie. My father is not a thief. … I have my rifle and plenty of ammunition. I shall kill every man who enters this room.”
For a moment nobody stirred or spoke. Then Quintana strode to the bolted door and struck it with the butt of his rifle.
“You, in there,” he said in a menacing voice, “ — you listen once to me! You open your door and come out. I give you one minute!” He struck the door again: “One minute, senorita! — or I cut from your frien’, here, the hand from his right arm!”
There was a deathly silence. Then the sound of bolts. The door opened. Slowly the girl limped forward, still wearing the hunting jacket over her night-dress.
Quintana made her an elaborate and ironical bow, slouch hat in hand; another masked man took her rifle.
“Senorita,” said Quintana with another sweep of his hat, “I ask pardon that I trouble you for my packet of which your father has rob me for ver’ long time.”
Slowly the girl lifted her blue eyes to Stormont. He was standing between two masked men. Their pistols were pressed slightly against his stomach.
Stormont reddened painfully:
“It was not for myself that I let you open your door,” he said. “They would not have ventured to lay hands on me.”
“Ah,” said Quintana with a terrifying smile, “you would not have been the first gendarme who had — accorded me his hand!”
Two of the masked men laughed loudly.
* * * * *
Outside in the rag-weed patch, Smith rose, stole across the grass to the kitchen door and slipped inside.
“Now, senorita,” said Quintana gaily, “my packet, if you please, — and we leave
you to the caresses of your faithful gendarme, — who should thank God that he still possesses the good two hands to fondle you! Allons! Come then! My packet!”
One of the masked men said: “Take her downstairs and lock her up somewhere or she’ll shoot us from her window.”
“Lead out that gendarme, too!” added Quintana, grasping Eve by the arm.
Down the stairs tramped the men, forcing their prisoners with them.
In the big kitchen the glare from the burning out-house fell dimly; the place was full of shadows.
“Now,” said Quintana, “I take my property and my leave. Where is the packet hidden?”
She stood for a moment with drooping head, amid the sombre shadows, then, slowly, she drew the emblazoned morocco case form her breast pocket.
What followed occurred in the twinkling of an eye: for, as Quintana extended his arm to grasp the case, a hand snatched it, a masked figure sprang through the doorway, and ran toward the barn.
Somebody recognized the hat and red bandanna:
“Salzar!” he yelled. “Nick Salzar!”
“A traitor, by God!” shouted Quintana. Even before he had reached the door, his pistol flashed twice, deafening all the semi-darkness, choking them with stifling fumes.
A masked man turned on Stormont, forcing him back into the pantry at pistol-point. Another man pushed Eve after him, slammed the pantry door and bolted it.
Through the iron bars of the pantry window, Stormont saw a man, wearing a red bandanna tied under his eyes, run up and untie his horse and fling himself astride under a shower of bullets.
As he wheeled the horse and swung him into the clearing toward the foot of Star Pond, his seat and horsemanship were not to be mistaken.
He was gone, now, the gallop stretching into a dead run; and Quintana’s men still following, shooting, hallooing in the starlight like a pack of leaping shapes from hell.
But Quintana had not followed far. When he had emptied his automatic he halted.
Something about the transaction suddenly checked his fury, stilled it, summoned his brain into action.
For a full minute he stood unstirring, every atom of intelligence in terrible concentration.
Presently he put his left hand into his pocket, fitted another clip to his pistol, turned on his heel and walked straight back to the house.
Between the two locked in the pantry not a word had passed. Stormont still peered out between the iron bars, striving to catch a glimpse of what was going on. Eve crouched at the pantry doors, her face in her hands, listening.
Suddenly she heard Quintana’s step in the kitchen. Cautiously she turned the pantry key from inside.
Stormont heard her, and instantly came to her. At the same moment
Quintana unbolted the door from the outside and tried to open it.
“Come out,” he said coldly, “or it will not go well with you when my men return.”
“You’ve got what you say is your property,” replied Stormont. “What do you want now?”
“I tell you what I want ver’ damn quick. Who was he, thees man who rides with my property on your horse away? Eh? Because it was not Nick Salzar! No! Salzar cannot ride thees way. No! Alors?”
“I can’t tell you who he was,” replied Stormont. “That’s your affair, not ours.”
“No? Ah! Ver’ well, then. I shall tell you Senor Flic! He was one of yours. I understan’. It is a trap, a cheat — what you call a plant! Thees man who rode your horse he is disguise! Yes! He also is a gendarme! Yes! You think I let a gendarme rob me? I got you where I want you now. You shall write your gendarme frien’ that he return to me my property, one day’s time, or I send him by parcel post two nice, fresh-out right-hands — your sweetheart’s and your own!”
Stormont drew Eve’s head close to his:
“This man is blood mad or out of his mind! I’d better go out and take a chance at him before the others come back.”
But the girl shook her head violently, caught him by the arm and drew him toward the mouth of the tile down which Clinch always emptied his hootch when the Dump was raided.
But now, it appeared that the tile which protruded from the cement floor was removable.
In silence she began to unscrew it, and he, seeing what she was trying to do, helped her.
Together they lifted the heavy tile and laid it on the floor.
“You open thees door!” shouted Quintana in a paroxysm of fury. “I give you one minute! Then, by God, I kill you both!”
Eve lifted a screen of wood through which the tile had been set. Under it a black hole yawned. It was a tunnel made of three-foot aqueduct tiles; and it led straight into star Pond, two hundred feet away.
Now, as she straightened up and looked silently at Stormont, they heard the trample of boots in the kitchen, voices, the bang of gun-stocks.
“Does that drain lead into the lake?” whispered Stormont.
She nodded.
“Will you follow me, Eve?”
She pushed him aside, indicating that he was to follow her.
As she stripped the hunting jacket from her, a hot colour swept her face. But she dropped on both knees, crept straight into the tile and slipped out of sight.
As she disappeared, Quintana shouted something in Portuguese, and fired at the lock.
With the smash of splintering wood in his ears, Stormont slid into the smooth tunnel.
In an instant he was shooting down a polished toboggan slide, and in another moment was under the icy water of Star Pond.
Shocked, blinded, fighting his way to the surface, he felt his spurred boots dragging at him like a ton of iron. Then to him came her helping hand.
“I can make it,” he gasped.
But his clothing and his boots and the icy water began to tell on him in mid-lake.
Swimming without effort beside him, watching his every stroke, presently she sank a little and glided under him and a little ahead, so that his hands fell upon her shoulders.
He let them rest, so, aware now that it was no burden to such a swimmer. Supple and silent as a swimming otter, the girl slipped lithely through the chilled water, which washed his body to the nostrils and numbed his legs till he could scarcely move them.
And now, of a sudden, his feet touched gravel. He stumbled forward in the shadow of overhanging trees and saw her wading shoreward, a dripping, silvery shape on the shoal.
Then, as he staggered up to her, breathless, where she was standing on the pebbled shore, he saw her join both hands, cup-shape, and lift them to her lips.
And out of her mouth poured diamond, sapphire, and emerald in a dazzling stream, — and among them, one great, flashing gem blazing in the starlight, — the Flaming Jewel!
Like a naiad of the lake she stood, white, slim, silent, the heaped gems glittering in her snowy hands, her face framed by the curling masses of her wet hair.
Then, slowly she turned her head to Stormont.
“These are what Quintana came for,” she said. “Could you put them into your pocket?”
* * * * *
Episode Eight
Cup and Lip
* * * * *
I
Two miles beyond Clinch’s Dump, Hal Smith pulled Stormont’s horse to a walk. He was tremendously excited.
With naive sincerity he believed that what he had done on the spur of the moment had been the only thing to do.
By snatching the Flaming Jewel from Quintana’s very fingers he had diverted that vindictive bandit’s fury from Eve, from Clinch, from Stormont, and had centred it upon himself.
More than that, he had sown the seeds of suspicion among Quintana’s own people. they never could discover Salzar’s body. Always they must believe that it was Nicolas Salzar and no other who so treacherously robbed them, and who rode away in a rain of bullets, shaking the emblazoned morocco case above his masked head in triumph, derision and defiance.
At the recollection of what had happened, Hal Smith drew bridle, and, sitting his sadd
le there in the false dawn, threw back his handsome head and laughed until the fading stars overhead swam in his eyes through tears of sheerest mirth.
For he was still young enough to have had the time of his life. Nothing in the Great War had so thrilled him. For, in what had just happened, there was humour. There had been none in the Great Grim Drama.
Still, Smith began to realise that he had taken the long, long chance of the opportunist who rolls the bones with Death. He had kept his pledge to the little Grand Duchess. It was a clean job. It was even good drama ——
The picturesque angle of the affair shook Hal Smith with renewed laughter. As a moving picture hero he thought himself the funniest thing on earth.
From the time he ha poked a pistol against Sard’s fat paunch, to this bullet-pelted ride for life, life had become one ridiculously exciting episode after another.
He had come through like the hero in a best-seller. … Lacking only a heroine. … If there had been any heroine it was Eve Strayer. Drama had gone wrong in that detail. … So perhaps, after all, it was real life he had been living and not drama. Drama, for the masses, must have a definite beginning and ending. Real life lacks the latter. In life nothing is finished. It is always a premature curtain which is yanked by that doddering old stage-hand, Johnny Death.
* * * * *
Smith sat in his saddle, thinking, beginning to be sobered now by the inevitable reaction which follows excitement and mirth as relentlessly as care dogs the horseman.
He had a fine time, — save for the horror of the Rock-trail. … He shuddered. … Anyway, at worst he had not shirked a clean deal in that ghastly game. … It was God’s mercy that he was not lying where Salzar lay, ten feet — twenty — a hundred deep, perhaps — in immemorial slime ——
He shook himself in his saddle as though to be rid of the creeping horror, and wiped his clammy face.
Now, in the false dawn, a blue-jay awoke somewhere among the oaks and filled the misty silence with harsh grace-notes.
Then reaction, setting in like a tide, stirred more sombre depths in the heart of this young man.
He thought of Riga; and of the Red Terror; of murder at noon-day, and outrage by night. He remembered his only encounter with a lovely child — once Grand Duchess of Esthonia — then a destitute refugee in silken rags.
Works of Robert W Chambers Page 1021
