The Flaming Jewel, Robert W. Chambers [reading tree txt] 📗

and looked at Stormont.

"I remember you now," she said. "You were with my husband in Riga."

She freed her right hand and held it out to Stormont. He had the grace to kiss it and did it very well for a Yankee.

Together they entered the kitchen door and turned into the dining room on the left, where were chairs around the plain pine table.

Darragh said: "The new mistress of Harrod Place has selected your quarters, Eve. They adjoin the quarters of her friend, the Countess Orloff-Strelwitz."

"Valentine begged me," said Ricca, smiling. "She is going to be lonely without me. All hours of day and night we were trotting into one another's rooms——" She looked gravely at Eve: "You will like Valentine; and she will like you very much.... As for me—I already love you."

She put one arm around Eve's shoulders: "How could you even think of remaining here all alone? Why, I should never close my eyes for thinking of you, dear."

Eve's head drooped; she said in a stifled voice: "I'll go with you.... I want to.... I'm very—tired."

"We had better go now," said Darragh. "Your things can be brought over later. If you'll dress for snow-shoeing, Jack can pack what clothes you need.... Are there snow-shoes for him, too?"

Eve turned tragically to her lover: "In Dad's closet——" she said, choking; then turned and went up the stairs, still clinging to Ricca's hand and drawing her with her.

Stormont followed, entered Clinch's quarters, and presently came downstairs again, carrying Clinch's snow-shoes and a basket pack.

He seated himself near Darragh. After a silence: "Your wife is beautiful, Jim.... Her character seems to be even more beautiful.... She's like God's own messenger to Eve.... And—you're rather wonderful yourself——"

"Nonsense," said Darragh, "I've given my wife her first American friend and I've done a shrewd stroke of business in nabbing the best business associate I ever heard of——"

"You're crazy but kind.... I hope I'll be some good.... One thing; I'll never get over what you've done for Eve in this crisis——"

"There'll be no crisis, Jack. Marry, and hook up with me in business. That solves everything.... Lord!—what a life Eve has had! But you'll make it all up to her ... all this loneliness and shame and misery of Clinch's Dump——"

Stormont touched his arm in caution: Eve and Ricca came down the stairs—the former now in the grey wool snow-shoe dress, and carrying her snow-shoes, black gown, and toilet articles.

Stormont began to stow away her effects in the basket pack; Darragh went over to her and took her hand.

"I'm so glad we are to be friends," he said. "It hurt a lot to know you held me in contempt. But I had to go about it that way."

Eve nodded. Then, suddenly recollecting: "Oh," she exclaimed, reddening, "I forgot the jewel case! It's under my pillow——"

She turned and sped upstairs and reappeared almost instantly, carrying the jewel-case.

Breathless, flushed, thankful and happy in the excitement of restitution, she placed the leather case in Ricca's hands.

"My jewels!" cried the girl, astounded. Then, with a little cry of delight, she placed the case upon the table, stripped open the emblazoned cover, and emptied the two trays. All over the table rolled the jewels, flashing, scintillating, ablaze with blinding light.

And at the same instant the outer door crashed open and Quintana covered them with Darragh's rifle.

"Now, by Christ!" he shouted, "who stirs a finger shall go to God in one jump! You, my gendarme frien'—you , my frien' Smith—turn your damn backs—han's up high!—tha's the way!—now, ladies!—back away there—get back or I kill!—sure, by Jesus, I kill you like I would some white little mice!——"

With incredible quickness he stepped forward and swept the jewels into one hand—filled the pocket of his trousers, caught up every stray stone and pocketed them.

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

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 God!" 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.

Nobody 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 Duchess of Esthonia, looked up at her brand-new husband and laughed.

"Did you really suppose it was these that brought me across the ocean? Did you suppose it was a passion for these that filled my heart? Did you think it was for these that I followed you?"

She laughed again, turned to Eve:

"You understand. Tell him that if he had been in rags I would have followed him like a gypsy.... They say there is gypsy blood in us.... God knows.... I think perhaps there is a little of it in all real women——" Still laughing she placed her hand lightly upon her heart—"In all women—perhaps—a Flaming Jewel imbedded here——"

Her eyes, tender, and mocking, met his; she lifted the jewel-case, closed it, and placed it in his hands.

"Now," she said, "you have everything in your possession; and we are safe—we are quite safe, now, my jewels and I."

Then she went to Eve and rested both hands on her shoulders.

"Shall we put on our snow-shoes and go—home?"

Stormont flung open the bullet-splintered door. Outside in the snow he dropped on both knees to buckle on Eve's snow-shoes.

Darragh was performing a like office for his wife, and the State Trooper, being unobserved, took Eve's slim hands and kissed them, looking up at her where he was kneeling.

Her pale face blushed as it had that day in the woods on Owl Marsh, so long, so long ago, when this man's lips first touched her hands.

As their eyes met both remembered. Then she smiled at her lover with the shy girl's soul of her gazing out at him through eyes as blue as the wild blind-gentians that grow among the ferns and mosses of Star Pond.

Far away in the northwestern forests Quintana still lashed his horses through the primeval pines.

Triumphant, reckless, resourceful, dangerous, he felt that now nothing could stop him, nothing bar his way to freedom.

Out of the wilderness lay his road and his destiny; out of it he must win his way, by strategy, by cunning, by violence—creep out, lie his way out, shoot his way out—it scarcely mattered. He was going out! He was going back to life once more. Who could forbid him? Who stop him? Who deny him, now, when, in his pockets, he held all that was worth living for—the keys to power, to pleasure,—the key to everything on earth!

In fierce exultation he slapped the glass jewels in his pocket and laughed aloud.

"The keys to the world!" he cried. "Let him stop me and take them who is a better man than I!" Then his long whip whistled and he cursed his horses.

Then, of a sudden, close by in the snowy road ahead, he saw a State Trooper on snow-shoes,—saw the upflung arm warning him—screamed curses at his horses, flogged them forward to crush this thing to death that dared menace him—this object that suddenly rose up out of nowhere to snatch from him the keys of the world——

For a moment the State Trooper looked after the runaway horses. There was no use following; they'd have to run till they dropped.

Then he lowered the levelled rifle from his shoulder, looked grimly at the limp thing which had tumbled from the sledge into the snowy road and which sprawled there crimsoning the spotless flakes that fell upon it.

THE END Novels by ROBERT W. CHAMBERS THE FLAMING JEWEL THE TREE OF HEAVEN THE LITTLE RED FOOT THE MOONLIT WAY THE SLAYER OF SOULS IN SECRET THE CRIMSON TIDE CARDIGAN THE LAUGHING GIRL THE RECKONING THE RESTLESS SEX THE MAID-AT-ARMS BARBARIANS AILSA PAIGE THE DARK STAR SPECIAL MESSENGER THE GIRL PHILIPPA THE HAUNTS OF MEN WHO GOES THERE! LORRAINE ATHALIE MAIDS OF PARADISE THE BUSINESS OF LIFE ASHES OF EMPIRE THE GAY REBELLION THE RED REPUBLIC THE STREETS OF ASCALON BLUE-BIRD WEATHER THE COMMON LAW A YOUNG MAN IN A HURRY THE FIGHTING CHANCE THE GREEN MOUSE THE YOUNGER SET IOLE THE DANGER MARK THE MYSTERY OF CHOICE THE FIRING LINE THE CAMBRIC MASK JAPONETTE THE MAKER OF MOONS QUICK ACTION THE KING IN YELLOW THE ADVENTURES OF A MODEST MAN IN SEARCH OF THE UNKNOWN ANNE'S BRIDGEL THE TRACER OF LOST PERSONS BETWEEN FRIENDS THE CONSPIRATORS THE BETTER MAN A KING AND A FEW DUKES POLICE!!!L THE HIDDEN CHILDREN SOME LADIES IN HASTEL IN THE QUARTER OUTSIDERS