The Flaming Jewel Part 36

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 sh.o.r.eward, a dripping, silvery shape on the shoal.

Then, as he staggered up to her, breathless, where she was standing on the pebbled sh.o.r.e, 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, flas.h.i.+ng 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 ma.s.ses 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 nave sincerity he believed that what he had done on the spur of the moment had been the only thing to do.

By s.n.a.t.c.hing 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 saddle 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 d.u.c.h.ess. 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 had 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 ma.s.ses, 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 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 had a fine time,--save for the horror of the Rocktrail.... He shuddered.... Anyway, at worst he had not s.h.i.+rked a clean deal in that ghastly game.... It was G.o.d'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 d.u.c.h.ess of Esthonia--then a dest.i.tute refugee in silken rags.

What a day that had been.... Only one day and one evening.... And never had he been so near in love in all his life....

That one day and evening had been enough for her to confide to an American officer her entire life's history.... Enough for him to pledge himself to her service while life endured.... And if emotion had swept every atom of reason out of his youthful head, there in the turmoil and alarm--there in the terrified, riotous city jammed with refugees, reeking with disease, half frantic from famine and the filthy, rising flood of war--if really it all had been merely romantic impulse, ardour born of overwrought sentimentalism, nevertheless, what he had pledged that day to a little Grand d.u.c.h.ess in rags, he had fulfilled to the letter within the hour.

As the false dawn began to fade, he loosened hunting coat and cartridge sling, drew from his s.h.i.+rt-bosom the morocco case.

It bore the arms and crest of the Grand d.u.c.h.ess Theodorica of Esthonia.

His fingers trembled slightly as he pressed the jewelled spring. It opened on an empty casket.

In the sudden shock of horror and astonishment, his convulsive clutch on the spring started a tiny bell ringing. Then, under his very nose, the empty tray slid aside revealing another tray underneath, set solidly with brilliants. A rainbow glitter streamed from the unset gems in the silken tray. Like an incredulous child he touched them. They were magnificently real.

In the centre lay blazing the great Erosite gem,--the Flaming Jewel itself. Priceless diamonds, sapphires, emeralds ringed it. In his hands he held nearly four millions of dollars.

Gingerly he balanced the emblazoned case, fascinated. Then he replaced the empty tray, closed the box, thrust it into the bosom of his flannel s.h.i.+rt and b.u.t.toned it in.

Now there was little more for this excited young man to do. He was through with Clinch. Hal Smith, hold-up man and dish-washer at Clinch's Dump, had ended his career. The time had now arrived for him to vanish and make room for James Darragh.

Because there still remained a very agreeable role for Darragh to play.

And he meant to eat it up--as Broadway has it.

For by this time the Grand d.u.c.h.ess of Esthonia--Ricca, as she was called by her companion, Valentine, the pretty Countess Orloff-Strelwitz--must have arrived in New York.

At the big hunting lodge of the late Henry Harrod--now inherited by Darragh--there might be a letter--perhaps a telegram--the cue for Hal Smith to vanish and for James Darragh to enter, play his brief but glittering part, and----

Darragh's sequence of pleasing meditations halted abruptly.... To walk out of the life of the little Grand d.u.c.h.ess did not seem to suit his ideas--indefinite and hazy as they were, so far.