"Take care of him, Hollingsworth," she whispered shuddering.

The last glow of sunset, reflected in the western sky, fell upon the tall figure of the Englishman in the mouth of the cavern. Tragedy seemed to be waiting to cast its mantel about him from behind.

"Good-bye, Genevra, my Princess," said Chase softly, and then was off with Britt and Selim. As he passed Drusilla, he seized her hand and paused long enough to say:

"It's all right, little woman, take my word for it. If I were you, I'd cry. You'll see things differently through your tears."

The four men, with their lights, vanished from sight a few moments later. Chase grasped Deppingham's arm and held him back, gravely suggesting that Selim should lead the way.

They were to learn the truth almost before they had fairly begun their investigations.

The heirs already were in the hands of their enemies, the islanders!

The appalling truth burst upon them with a suddenness that stunned their sensibilities for many minutes. All doubt was swept away by the revelation.

The eager searchers, shouting as they went, had picked their way down the steps in the sloping floor of the cavern, down through the winding galleries and clammy grottoes, their voices booming ever and anon against the silent walls with the roar of foghorns. Now they had come to what was known as "the Cathedral." This was a wide, lofty chamber, hung with dripping stalactites, far below the level at which they began the descent. The floor was almost as flat and even as that of a modern dwelling. Here the cavern branched off in three or four directions, like the tentacles of a monster devilfish, the narrow passages leading no one knew whither in that tomb-like mountain.

Selim uttered the first shout of surprise and consternation. Then the four of them rushed forward, their eyes almost starting from their sockets. An instant later they were standing at the edge of a vast hole in the floor—newly made and pregnant with disaster.

A current of air swept up into their faces. The soft, loose earth about the rent in the floor was covered with the prints of naked feet; the bottom of the hole was packed down in places by a multitude of tracks. Chase's bewildered eyes were the first to discover the presence of loose, scattered masonry in the pile below and the truth dawned upon him sharply. He gave a loud exclamation and then dropped lightly into the shallow hole.

"I've got it!" he shouted, stooping to peer intently ahead. "Von Blitz's powder kegs did all this. The secret passage runs along here. One of the discharges blew this hole through the roof of the passage. Here are the walls of the passage. By heaven, the way is open to the sea!"

"My God, Chase!" cried Deppingham, staggering toward the opening. "These footprints are—God! They've murdered her! They've come in here and surprised——"

"Go easy, old man! We need to be cool now. It's all as plain as day to me. Rasula and his men were exploring the passage after the discovery of the treasure chests. They came upon this new-made hole and then crawled into the cavern. They surprised Browne and—Yes, here are the prints of a woman's shoe—and a man's, too. They're gone, God help 'em!"

He climbed out of the hole and rushed about "the Cathedral" in search of further evidence. Deppingham dropped suddenly to his knees and buried his face in his hands, sobbing like a child.

It was all made plain to the searchers. Signs of a fierce struggle were found near the entrance to the Cathedral. Bobby Browne had made a gallant fight. Blood stains marked the smooth floor and walls, and there was evidence that a body had been dragged across the chamber.

Britt put his hand over his eyes and shuddered. "They've settled this contest, Chase, forever!" he groaned.



CHAPTER XXIX

THE PURSUIT

Deppingham sprang to his feet with a fierce oath on his lips. His usually lustreless eyes were gleaming with something more than despair; there was the wild light of unmistakable relief in them. It was as if a horrid doubt had been scaled from the soul of Lady Deppingham's husband.

"We must follow!" shouted his lordship, preparing to lower himself into the jagged opening. "We may be in time!"

"Stop, Deppingham!" cried Chase, leaping to his side. "Don't rush blindly into a trap like that. Let's consider for a moment."

They had it back and forth for many minutes, the united efforts of the three men being required to keep the half-frantic Englishman from rushing alone into the passage. Reason at last prevailed.

"They've got an hour or more start of us," argued Chase. "Nothing will be accomplished by rushing into an ambush. They'd kill us like rats. Rasula is a sagacious scoundrel. He'll not take the entire responsibility. There will be a council of all the head men. It will be of no advantage to them to kill the heirs unless they are sure that we won't live to tell the tale. They will go slow, now that they have the chief obstacles to victory in their hands."

"If they will give her up to me, I will guarantee that Lady Agnes shall relinquish all claim to the estate," announced the harassed husband.

"They won't do that, old man. Promises won't tempt them," protested Chase. "We've got to do what we can to rescue them. I'm with you, gentlemen, in the undertaking, first for humanity's sake; secondly, because I am your friend; lastly, because I don't want my clients to lose all chance of winning out in this controversy by acting like confounded asses. It isn't what Sir John expects of me. Now, let's consider the situation sensibly."

In the meantime, the anxious coterie in the chateau were waiting eagerly for the return of the searchers. Night had fallen swiftly. The Princess and Drusilla were walking restlessly back and forth, singularly quiet and constrained. The latter sighed now and then in a manner that went directly to the heart of her companion. Genevra recognised the futility of imposing her sympathies in the face of this significant reserve.

Drusilla made one remark, half unconsciously, no doubt, that rasped in the ears of the Princess for days. It was the cold, bitter, resigned epitome of the young wife's thoughts.

"Robert has loved her for months." That was all.

Mr. and Mrs. Saunders, thankful that something had happened to divert attention from their own conspicuous plight, were discoursing freely in the centre of a group composed of the four Englishmen from the bank, all of whom had deserted their posts of duty to hear the details of the amazing disappearance.

"It's a plain out and out elopement," said Mrs. Saunders, fanning herself vigorously.

"But, my dear," expostulated her husband, blushing vividly over the first public use of the appellation, "where the devil could they elope to?"

"I don't know, Tommy, but elopers never take that into consideration. Do they, Mr. Bowles?"

Mr. Bowles readjusted the little red forage cap and said he'd be hanged if he knew the eloping symptoms.

At last the four men appeared in the mouth of the cavern. The watchers below fell into chilled silence when they discovered that the missing ones were not with them. Stupefied with apprehension, they watched the men descend the ladder and cross the bridge.

"They are dead!" fell from Brasilia Browne's lips. She swayed for an instant and then sank to the ground, unconscious.

* * * * *

In the conference which followed the return of the searchers, it was settled that three of the original party should undertake the further prosecution of the hunt for the two heirs. Lord Deppingham found ready volunteers in Chase and the faithful Selim. They prepared to go out in the hills before the night was an hour older. Selim argued that the abductors would not take their prisoners to the town of Aratat. He understood them well enough to know that they fully appreciated the danger of an uprising among those who were known to be openly opposed to the high-handed operations of Rasula and his constituency. He convinced Chase that the wily Rasula would carry his captives to the mines, where he was in full power.

"You're right, Selim. If he's tried that game we'll beat him at it. Ten to one, if he hasn't already chucked them into the sea, they're now confined in one of the mills over there."

They were ready to start in a very short time. Selim carried a quantity of food and a small supply of brandy. Each was heavily armed and prepared for a stiff battle with the abductors. They were to go by way of the upper gate, taking chances on leaving the park without discovery by the sentinels.

"We seem constantly to be saying good-bye to each other." Thus spoke the Princess to Chase as he stood at the top of the steps waiting for Selim. The darkness hid the wan, despairing smile that gave the lie to her sprightly words.

"And I'm always doing the unexpected thing—coming back. This time I may vary the monotony by failing to return."

"I should think you could vary it more pleasantly by not going away," she said. "You will be careful?"

"The danger is here, not out there," he said meaningly.

"You mean—me? But, like all danger, I soon shall pass. In a few days, I shall say good-bye forever and sail away."

"How much better it would be for you if this were the last good-bye—and I should not come back."

"For me?"

"Yes. You could marry the Prince without having me on your conscience forevermore."

"Mr. Chase!"

"It's easier to forget the dead than the living, they say."

"Don't be too sure of that."

"Ah, there's Selim! Good-bye! We'll have good news for you all, I hope, before long. Keep your eyes on Neenah. She and Selim have arranged a set of signals. Don't lie awake all night—and don't pray for me," he scoffed, in reckless mood.

The three men stole out through the small gate in the upper end of the park. Selim at once took the lead. They crept off into the black forest, keeping clear of the mountain path until they were far from the walls. It was hard going among the thickly grown, low-hanging trees. They were without lights; the jungle was wrapped in the blackness of night; the trail was unmade and arduous. For more than a mile they crept through the unbroken vegetation of the tropics, finally making their way down to the beaten path which led past the ruins of the bungalow and up to the mountain road that provided a short cut around the volcano to the highlands overlooking the mines district in the cradle-like valley beyond.

Deppingham had not spoken since they left the park grounds. He came second in the single file that they observed, striding silently and obediently at the given twenty paces behind Selim. They kept to the grassy roadside and moved swiftly and with as little noise as possible. By this time, their eyes had grown accustomed to the darkness; they could distinguish one another quite clearly. The starlight filtered down through the leafy canopy above the road, increasing rather than decreasing the density of the shadows through which they sped. None but strong, determined, inspired men could have followed the pace set by the lithe, surefooted Selim.

Mile after mile fell behind them, with no relaxation of energy or purpose. Chase found time and opportunity to give his thoughts over to Genevra. A mighty longing to clasp her in his arms and carry her to the ends of the earth took possession of him: a longing to drag her far from the conventions which bound her to a world he could not enter into. Down in his heart, he knew that she loved him: it was not a play-day folly with her. And yet he knew that the end would be as she had said. She would be the wife of the man she did not love. Fate had given her to him when the world was young; there was no escape. In story-books, perhaps, but not in real life. And how he had come to love her!

They were coming to the ridge road and Selim fell back to explain the need for caution. The ridge road crept along the brow of the deep canyon that ran down to the sea. This was the road, in all likelihood, he explained, that the abductors would have used in their flight from the cavern. Two miles farther south it joined the wide highway that ran from Aratat to the mines.

Selim crept on ahead to reconnoitre. He was back in ten minutes with the information that a party of men had but lately passed along the road toward the south. Their footprints in the soft, untraveled road were fresh. The stub of a cigarette that had scarcely burned itself out proved to him conclusively that the smoker, at least, was not far ahead of them.

They broke away from the road and took a less exposed course through the forest to their right, keeping well within earshot of the ridge, but moving so carefully that there was slight danger of alarming the party ahead. The fact that the abductors—there seemed to be no doubt as to identity—had spent several hours longer than necessary in traversing the distance between the cave and the point just passed, proving rather conclusively that they were encumbered by living, not dead, burdens.

At last the sound of voices came to the ears of the pursuers. As they crept closer and closer, they became aware of the fact that the party had halted and were wrangling among themselves over some point in dispute. With Selim in the lead, crawling like panthers through the dense undergrowth, the trio came to the edge of the timber land. Before them lay the dark, treeless valley; almost directly below them, not fifty yards away, clustered the group of disputing islanders, a dozen men in all, with half as many flaring torches.

They had halted in the roadway at the point where a sharp defile through the rocks opened a way down into the valley. Like snakes the pursuers wriggled their way to a point just above the small basin in which the party was congregated.

A great throb of exultation leaped up from their hearts, In plain view, at the side of the road, were the two persons for whom they were searching.

"God, luck is with us," whispered Chase unconsciously.

Lady Agnes, dishevelled, her dress half stripped from her person, was seated upon a great boulder, staring hopelessly, lifelessly at the crowd of men in the roadway. Beside her stood a tall islander, watching her and at the same time listening eagerly to the dispute that went on between his fellows. She was not bound; her hands and feet and lips were free. The glow from the torches held by gesticulating hands fell upon her tired, frightened face. Deppingham groaned aloud as he looked down upon the wretched, hopeless woman that he loved and had come out to die for.

Bobby Browne was standing near by. His hands were tightly bound behind his back. His face was blood-covered and the upper part of his body was almost bare, evidence of the struggle he had made against overwhelming odds. He was staring at the ground, his head and shoulders drooping in utter dejection.

The cause of the slow progress made by the attacking party was also apparent after a moment's survey of the situation. Three of the treasure chests were standing beside the road, affording seats for as many weary carriers. It was all quite plain to Chase. Rasula and his men had chanced upon the two white people during one of their trips to the cave for the purpose of removing the chests. Moreover, it was reasonable to assume that this lot of chests represented the last of those stored away by Von Blitz. The others had been borne away by detachments of men who left the cave before the discovery and capture of the heirs.

Rasula was haranguing the crowd of men in the road. The hidden listeners could hear and understand every word he uttered.

"It is the only way," he was shouting angrily. "We cannot take them into the town to-night—maybe not for two or three days. Some there are in Aratat who would end their lives before sunrise. I say to you that we cannot put them to death until we are sure that the others have no chance to escape to England. I am a lawyer. I know what it would mean if the story got to the ears of the government. We have them safely in our hands. The others will soon die. Then—then there can be no mistake! They must be taken to the mines and kept there until I have explained everything to the people. Part of us shall conduct them to the lower mill and the rest of us go on to the bank with these chests of gold." In the end, after much grumbling and fierce quarreling, in which the prisoners took little or no interest, the band was divided into two parts. Rasula and six of the sturdiest men prepared to continue the journey to Aratat, transporting the chests. Five sullen, resentful fellows moved over beside the captives and threw themselves down upon the grassy sward, lighting their cigarettes with all the philosophical indifference of men who regard themselves as put upon by others at a time when there is no alternative.

"We will wait here till day comes," growled one of them defiantly. "Why should we risk our necks going down the pass to-night? It is one o'clock. The sun will be here in three hours. Go on!"

"As you like, Abou Dal," said Rasula, shrugging his pinched shoulders. "I shall come to the mill at six o'clock." Turning to the prisoners, he bowed low and said, with a soft laugh: "Adios, my lady, and you, most noble sir. May your dreams be pleasant ones. Dream that you are wedded and have come into the wealth of Japat, but spare none of your dream to the husband and wife, who are lying awake and weeping for the foolish ones who would go searching for the forbidden fruit Folly is a hard road to travel and it leads to the graveyard of fools. Adios!"

Lady Agnes bent over and dropped her face into her hands. She was trembling convulsively. Browne did not show the slightest sign that he had heard the galling words.

At a single sharp command, the six men picked up the three chests and moved off rapidly down the road Rasula striding ahead with the flaring torch.

They were barely out of sight beyond the turn in the hill when Deppingham moved as though impulse was driving him into immediate attack upon the guards who were left behind with the unhappy prisoners. Chase laid a restraining hand upon his arm.

"Wait! Plenty of time. Wait an hour. Don't spoil everything. We'll save them sure," he breathed in the other's ear. Deppingham's groan was almost loud enough to have been heard above the rustling leaves and the collective maledictions of the disgusted islanders.

The minutes slipped by with excruciating slowness The wakeful eyes of the three watchers missed nothing that took place in the little grass-grown niche below them They could have sprung almost into the centre of the group from the position they occupied. Utterly unconscious of the surveillance, the islanders gradually sunk into a morose, stupid silence. If the watchers hoped that they might go to sleep they were to be disappointed Two of the men sat with their backs to the rocks, their rifles across their knees. The others sprawled lazily upon the soft grass. Two torches, stuck in the earth, threw a weird light over the scene.

Bobby Browne was now lying with his shoulder against a fallen tree-trunk, staring with unswerving gaze at the woman across the way. She was looking off into the night, steadfastly refusing to glance in his direction. For fully half an hour this almost speaking tableau presented itself to the spectators above.

Then suddenly Lady Agnes arose to her feet and lifted her hands high toward the black dome of heaven, Salammbo-like, and prayed aloud to her God, the sneering islanders looking on in silent derision.



CHAPTER XXX

THE PERSIAN ANGEL

The man called Abou suddenly leaped to his feet, and, with the cry of an eager animal, sprang to her side. His arms closed about her slender figure with the unmistakable lust of the victor. A piteous, heart-rending shriek left her lips as he raised her clear of the ground and started toward the dense shadows across the road. Her terror-stricken face was turned to the light; her cries for mercy were directed to the brute's companions.

They did not respond, but another did. A hoarse, inarticulate cry of rage burst from Deppingham's lips. His figure shot out through the air and down the short slope with the rush of an infuriated beast. Even as the astonished Abou dropped his struggling burden to meet the attack of the unexpected deliverer, he was felled to the earth by a mighty blow from the rifle which his assailant swung swift and true. His skull was crushed as if it were an eggshell.

Lady Agnes struggled to her feet, wild-eyed, half crazed by the double assault. The next instant she fell forward upon her face, dead to all that was to follow in the next few minutes. Her glazed eyes caught a fleeting glimpse of the figures that seemed to sweep down from the sky, and then all was blank.

There was no struggle. Chase and Selim were upon the stupefied islanders before they could move, covering them with their rifles. The wretches fell upon their knees and howled for mercy. While Deppingham was holding his wife's limp form in his arms, calling out to her in the agony of fear, utterly oblivious to all else that was happening about him, his two friends were swiftly disarming the grovelling natives. Selim's knife severed the cords that bound Bobby Browne's hands; he was staring blankly, dizzily before him, and many minutes passed before he was able to comprehend that deliverance had come.

Ten minutes later Chase was addressing himself to the four islanders, who, bound and gagged, were tied by their own sashes to trees some distance from the roadside.

"I've just thought of a little service you fellows can perform for me in return for what I've done for you. All the time you're doing it, however, there will be pistols quite close to your backs. I find that Lady Deppingham is much too weak to take the five miles' walk we've got to do in the next two hours—or less. You are to have the honour of carrying her four miles and a half, and you will have to get along the best you can with the gags in your mouths. I'm rather proud of the inspiration. We were up against it, hard, until I thought of you fellows wasting your time up here in the woods. Corking scheme, isn't it? Two of you form a basket with your hands—I'll show you how. You carry her for half a mile; then the other two may have the satisfaction of doing something just as handsome for the next half mile—and so on. Great, eh?"

And it was in just that fashion that the party started off without delay in the direction of the chateau. Two of the cowed but eager islanders were carrying her ladyship between them, Deppingham striding close behind in a position to catch her should she again lose consciousness. Her tense fingers clung to the straining shoulders of the carriers, and, although she swayed dizzily from time to time, she maintained her trying position with extreme courage and cool-headedness. Now and then she breathed aloud the name of her husband, as if to assure herself that he was near at hand. She kept her eyes closed tightly, apparently uniting every vestige of force in the effort to hold herself together through the last stages of the frightful ordeal which had fallen to her that night.

With Selim in the lead, the little procession moved swiftly but cautiously through the black jungle, bent on reaching the gate if possible before the night lifted. Chase and Bobby Browne brought up the rear with the two reserve carriers in hand. Browne, weak and suffering from torture and exposure, struggled bravely along, determined not to retard their progress by a single movement of indecision. He had talked volubly for the first few minutes after their rescue, but now was silent and intent upon thoughts of his own. His head and face were bruised and cut; his body was stiff and sore from the effects of his valiant battle in the cavern and the subsequent hardships of the march.

In his heart Bobby Browne was now raging against the fate that had placed him in this humiliating, almost contemptible position. He, and he alone, was responsible for the sufferings that Lady Agnes had endured: it was as gall and wormwood to him that other men had been ordained to save her from the misery that he had created. He could almost have welcomed death for himself and her rather than to have been saved by George Deppingham. As he staggered along, propelled by the resistless force which he knew to be a desire to live in spite of it all, he was wondering how he could ever hold up his head again in the presence of those who damned him, even as they had prayed for him.

His wife! He could never be the same to her. He had forfeited the trust and confidence of the one loyal believer among them all.... And now, Lady Deppingham loathed him because his weakness had been greater than hers!

When he would have slain the four helpless islanders with his own hands, Hollingsworth Chase had stayed his rage with the single, caustic adjuration:

"Keep out of this, Browne! You've been enough of a damned bounder without trying that sort of thing."

Tears were in Bobby Browne's eyes as, mile after mile, he blundered along at the side of his fellow-countryman, his heart bleeding itself dry through the wound those words had made.

It was still pitch dark when they came to the ridge above the park. Through the trees the lights in the chateau could be seen. Lady Agnes opened her eyes and cried out in tremulous joy. A great wave of exaltation swept over Hollingsworth Chase. She was watching and waiting there with the others!

"Dame Fortune is good to us," he said, quite irrelevantly. Selim muttered the sacred word "Allah." Chase's trend of thought, whatever it may have been, was ruthlessly checked. "That reminds me," he said briskly, "we can't waste Allah's time in dawdling here. Luck has been with us—and Allah, too—great is Allah! But we'll have to do some skilful sneaking on our own hook, just the same. If the upper gate is being watched—and I doubt it very much—we'll have a hard time getting inside the walls, signal or no signal. The first thing for us to do is to make everything nice and snug for our four friends here. You've laboured well and faithfully," he said to the panting islanders, "and I'm going to reward you. I'm going to set you free. But not yet. Don't rejoice. First, we shall tie you securely to four stout trees just off the road. Then we'll leave you to take a brief, much-needed rest. Lady Deppingham, I fancy, can walk the rest of the way through the woods. Just as soon as we are inside the walls, I'll find some way to let your friends know that you are here. You can explain the situation to them better than I can. Tell 'em that it might have been worse."

He and Selim promptly marched the bewildered islanders into the wood. Bobby Browne, utterly exhausted, had thrown himself to the soft earth. Lady Deppingham was standing, swaying but resolute, her gaze upon the distant, friendly windows.

At last she turned to look at her husband, timorously, an appeal in her eyes that the darkness hid. He was staring at her, a stark figure in the night. After a long, tense moment of indecision, she held out her hands and he sprang forward in time to catch her as she swayed toward him. She was sobbing in his arms. Bobby Browne's heavy breathing ceased in that instant, and he closed his ears against the sound that came to them.

Deppingham gently implored her to sit down with him and rest. Together they walked a few paces farther away from their companion and sat down by the roadside. For many minutes no word was spoken; neither could whisper the words that were so hard in finding their way up from the depths. At last she said:

"I've made you unhappy. I've been so foolish. It has not been fun, either, my husband. God knows it hasn't. You do not love me now."

He did not answer her at once and she shivered fearfully in his arms. Then he kissed her brow gently.

"I do love you, Agnes," he said intensely. "I will answer for my own love if you can answer for yours. Are you the same Agnes that you were? My Agnes?"

"Will you believe me?"

"Yes."

"I could lie to you—God knows I would lie to you."

"I—I would rather you lied to me than to—-"

"I know. Don't say it. George," as she put her hands to his face and whispered in all the fierceness of a desperate longing to convince him, "I am the same Agnes. I am your Agnes. I am! You do believe me?"

He crushed her close to his breast and then patted her shoulder as a father might have touched an erring child.

"That's all I ask of you," he said. She lay still and almost breathless for a long time.

At last she spoke: "It is not wholly his fault, George. I was to blame. I led him on. You understand?"

"Poor devil!" said he drily. "It's a way you have, dear."

The object of this gentle commiseration was staring with gloomy eyes at the lights below. He was saying to himself, over and over again: "If I can only make Drusie understand!"

Chase and Selim came down upon this little low-toned picture. The former paused an instant and smiled joyously in the darkness.

"Come," was all he said. Without a word the three arose and started off down the road. A few hundred feet farther on, Selim abruptly turned off among the trees. They made their way slowly, cautiously to a point scarcely a hundred feet from the wall and somewhat to the right of the small gate. Here he left them and crept stealthily away. A few minutes later he crept back to them, a soft hiss on his lips.

"Five men are near the gate," he whispered. "They watch so closely that no one may go to rescue those who have disappeared. Friends are hidden inside the wall, ready to open the gate at a signal. They have waited with Neenah all night. And day is near, sahib."

"We must attack at once," said Chase. "We can take them by surprise. No killing, mind you. They're not looking for anything to happen outside the walls. It will be easy if we are careful. No shooting unless necessary. If we should fail to surprise them, Selim and I will dash off into the forest and they will follow us, Then, Deppingham, you and Browne get Lady Deppingham inside the gate. We'll look out for ourselves. Quiet now!"

Five shadowy figures soon were distinguished huddled close to the wall below the gate. The sense of sight had become keen during those trying hours in the darkness.

The islanders were conversing in low tones, a word or two now and then reaching the ears of the others. It was evident from what was being said, that, earlier in the evening, messengers had carried the news from Rasula to the town; the entire population was now aware of the astounding capture of the two heirs. There had been rejoicing; it was easy to picture the populace lying in wait for the expected relief party from the chateau.

Suddenly a blinding, mysterious light flashed upon the muttering group. As they fell back, a voice, low and firm, called out to them:

"Not a sound or you die!"

Four unwavering rifles were bearing upon the surprised islanders and four very material men were advancing from the ghostly darkness. An electric lantern shot a ray of light athwart the scene.

"Drop your guns—quick!" commanded Chase. "Don't make a row!"

Paralysed with fear and amazement, the men obeyed. They could not have done otherwise. The odds were against them; they were bewildered; they knew not how to combat what seemed to them an absolutely supernatural force.

While the three white men kept them covered with their rifles, Selim ran to the gate, uttering the shrill cry of a night bird. There was a rush of feet inside the walls, subdued exclamations, and then a glad cry.

"Quick!" called Selim. The keys rattled in the locks, the bolts were thrown down, and an instant later, Lady Deppingham was flying across the space which intervened between her and the gate, where five or six figures were huddled and calling out eagerly for haste.

The men were beside her a moment later, possessed of the weapons of the helpless sentinels. With a crash the gates were closed and a joyous laugh rang out from the exultant throat of Hollingsworth Chase.

"By the Lord Harry, this is worth while!" he shouted. Outside, the maddened guards were sounding the tardy alarm. Chase called out to them and told them where they could find the four men in the forest. Then he turned to follow the group that had scurried off toward the chateau. The first grey shade of day was coming into the night.

He saw Neenah ahead of him, standing still in the centre of the gravelled path. Beyond her was the tall figure of a man.

"You are a trump, Neenah," cried Chase, hurrying up to her. "A Persian angel!"

It was not Neenah's laugh that replied. Chase gasped in amazement and then uttered a cry of joy.

The Princess Genevra, slim and erect, was standing before him, her hand touching her turban in true military salute, soft laughter rippling from her lips.

In the exuberance of joy, he clasped that little hand and crushed it against his lips.

"You!" he exclaimed.

"Sh!" she warned, "I have retained my guard of honour."

He looked beyond her and beheld the tall, soldierly figure of a Rapp-Thorberg guardsman.

"The devil!" fell involuntarily from his lips.

"Not at all. He is here to keep me from going to the devil," she cried so merrily that he laughed aloud with her in the spirit of unbounded joy. "Come! Let us run after the others. I want to run and dance and sing."

He still held her hand as they ran swiftly down the drive, followed closely by the faithful sergeant.

"You are an angel," he said in her ear. She laughed as she looked up into his face.

"Yes—a Persian angel," she cried. "It's so much easier to run well in a Persian angel's costume," she added.



CHAPTER XXXI

A PRESCRIBED MALADY

"You are wonderful, staying out there all night watching for—us." He was about to say "me."

"How could any one sleep? Neenah found this dress for me—aren't these baggy trousers funny? She rifled the late Mr. Wyckholme's wardrobe. This costume once adorned a sultana, I'm told. It is a most priceless treasure. I wore it to-night because I was much less conspicuous as a sultana than I might have been had I gone to the wall as a princess."

"I like you best as the Princess," he said, frankly surveying her in the grey light.

"I think I like myself as the Princess, too," she said naively. He sighed deeply. They were quite close to the excited group on the terrace when she said: "I am very, very happy now, after the most miserable night I have ever known. I was so troubled and afraid——"

"Just because I went away for that little while? Don't forget that I am soon to go out from you for all time. How then?"

"Ah, but then I will have Paris," she cried gaily. He was puzzled by her mood—but then, why not? What could he be expected to know of the moods of royal princesses? No more than he could know of their loves.

Lady Deppingham was got to bed at once. The Princess, more thrilled by excitement than she ever had been in her life, attended her friend. In the sanctity of her chamber, the exhausted young Englishwoman bared her soul to this wise, sympathetic young woman in Persian vestment.

"Genevra," she said solemnly, in the end, "take warning from my example. When you once are married, don't trifle with other men—not even if you shouldn't love your husband. Sooner or later you'd get tripped up. It doesn't pay, my dear. I never realised until tonight how much I really care for Deppy and I am horribly afraid that I've lost something I can never recover. I've made him unhappy and—and—all that. Can you tell me what it is that made me—but never mind! I'm going to be good."

"You were not in love with Mr. Browne. That is why I can't understand you, Agnes."

"My dear, I don't understand myself. How can I expect you or my husband to understand me? How could I expect it of Bobby Browne? Oh, dear; oh, dear, how tired I am! I think I shall never move out of this bed again. What a horrible, horrible time I've had." She sat up suddenly and stared wide-eyed before her, looking upon phantoms that came out of the hours just gone.

"Hush, dear! Lie down and go to sleep. You will feel better in a little while." Lady Agnes abruptly turned to her with a light in her eyes that checked the kindly impulses.

"Genevra, you are in love—madly in love with Hollingsworth Chase. Take my advice: marry him. He's one man in a—" Genevra placed her hand over the lips of the feverish young woman.

"I will not listen to anything more about Mr. Chase," she said firmly. "I am tired—tired to death of being told that I should marry him."

"But you love him," Lady Agnes managed to mumble, despite the gentle impediment.

"I do love him, yes, I do love him," cried the Princess, casting reserve to the winds. "He knows it—every one knows it. But marry him? No—no—no! I shall marry Karl. My father, my mother, my grandfather, have said so—and I have said it, too. And his father and grandfather and a dozen great grandparents have ordained that he shall marry a princess and I a prince, That ends it, Agnes! Don't speak of it again." She cast herself down upon the side of the bed and clenched her hands in the fierceness of despair and—decision. After a moment, Lady Agnes said dreamily: "I climbed up the ladder to make a 'ladyship' of myself by marriage and I find I love my husband. I daresay if you should go down the ladder a few rounds, my dear, you might be as lucky. But take my advice, if you won't marry Hollingsworth Chase, don't let him come to Paris."

The Princess Genevra lifted her face instantly, a startled expression in her eyes.

"Agnes, you forget yourself!"

"My dear," murmured Lady Agnes sleepily, "forgive me, but I have such a shockingly absent mind." She was asleep a moment later.

In the meantime, Bobby Browne, disdaining all commands and entreaties, refused to be put to bed until he had related the story of their capture and the subsequent events that made the night memorable. He talked rapidly, feverishly, as if every particle of energy was necessary to the task of justifying himself in some measure for the night's mishap. He sat with his rigid arm about his wife's shoulders. Drusilla was stroking one of his hands in a half-conscious manner, her eyes staring past his face toward the dark forest from which he had come. Mr. Britt was ordering brandy and wine for his trembling client.

"After all," said Browne, hoarse with nervousness, "there is some good to be derived from our experiences, hard as it may be to believe. I have found out the means by which Rasula intends to destroy every living creature in the chateau." He made this statement at the close of the brief, spasmodic recital covering the events of the night. Every one drew nearer. Chase threw off his spell of languidness and looked hard at the speaker. "Rasula coolly asked me, at one of our resting places, if there had been any symptoms of poisoning among us. I mentioned Pong and the servants. The devil laughed gleefully in my face and told me that it was but the beginning. I tell you. Chase, we can't escape the diabolical scheme he has arranged. We are all to be poisoned—I don't see how we can avoid it if we stay here much longer. It is to be a case of slow death by the most insidious scheme of poisoning imaginable, or, on the other hand, death by starvation and thirst. The water that comes to us from the springs up there in the hills is to be poisoned by those devils."

There were exclamations of unbelief, followed by the sharp realisation that he was, after all, pronouncing doom upon each and every one of those who listened.

"Rasula knows that we have no means of securing water except from the springs. Several days ago his men dumped a great quantity of some sort of poison into the stream—a poison that is used in washing or polishing the rubies, whatever it is. Well, that put the idea into his head. He is going about it shrewdly, systematically. I heard him giving instructions to one of his lieutenants. He thought I was still unconscious from a blow I received when I tried to interfere in behalf of Lady Agnes, who was being roughly dragged along the mountain road. Day and night a detachment of men are to be employed at the springs, deliberately engaged in the attempt to change the flow of pure water into a slow, subtle, deadly poison, the effects of which will not be immediately fatal, but positively so in the course of a few days. Every drop of water that we drink or use in any way will be polluted with this deadly cyanide. It's only a question of time. In the end we shall sicken and die as with the scourge. They will call it the plague!"

A shudder of horror swept through the crowd. Every one looked into his neighbour's face with a profound inquiring light in his eyes, seeking for the first evidence of approaching death.

Hollingsworth Chase uttered a short, scornful laugh as he unconcernedly lifted a match to one of his precious cigarettes. The others stared at him in amazement. He had been exceedingly thoughtful and preoccupied up to that moment.

"Great God, Chase!" groaned Browne. "Is this a joke?"

"Yes—and it's on Rasula," said the other laconically.

"But even now, man, they are introducing this poison into our systems——"

"You say that Rasula isn't aware of the fact that you overheard what he said to his man? Then, even now, in spite of your escape, he believes that we may go on drinking the water without in the least suspecting what it has in store for us. Good! That's why I say the joke is on him."

"But, my God, we must have water to drink," cried Britt. Mrs. Saunders alone divined the thought that filled Chase's mind. She clapped her hands and cried out wonderingly:

"I know! I—I took depositions in a poisoning case two years ago. Why, of course!"

"Browne, you are a doctor—a chemist," said Chase calmly, first bestowing a fine smile upon the eager Mrs. Saunders. "Well, we'll distil and double and triple distil the water. That's all. A schoolboy might have thought of that. It's all right, old man. You're fagged out; your brain isn't working well. Don't look so crestfallen. Mr. Britt, you and Mr. Saunders will give immediate instructions that no more water is to be drunk—or used—until Mr. Browne has had a few hours' rest. He can take an alcohol bath and we can all drink wine. It won't hurt us. At ten o'clock sharp Dr. Browne will begin operating the distilling apparatus in the laboratory. As a matter of fact, I learned somewhere—at college, I imagine—that practically pure water may be isolated from wine." He arose painfully and stretched himself. "I think I'll get a little much-needed rest. Do the same, Browne—and have a rub down. By Jove, will you listen to the row my clients are making out there in the woods! They seem to be annoyed over something."

Outside the walls the islanders were shouting and calling to each other; rifles were cracking, far and near, voicing, in their peculiarly spiteful way, the rage that reigned supreme.

As Chase ascended the steps Bobby Browne and his wife came up beside him.

"Chase," said Browne, in a low voice, his face turned away to hide the mortification that filled his soul, "you are a man! I want you to know that I thank you from the bottom of my heart."

"Never mind, old man! Say no more," interrupted Chase, suddenly embarrassed.

"I've been a fool, Chase. I don't deserve the friendship of any one—not even that of my wife. It's all over, though. You understand? I'm not a coward. I'll do anything you say—take any risk—to pay for the trouble I've caused you all. Send me out to fight——"

"Nonsense! Your wife needs you, Browne. Don't you, Mrs. Browne? There, now! It will be all right, just as I said. I daresay, Browne, that I wouldn't have been above the folly that got the better of you. Only—" he hesitated for a minute—"only, it couldn't have happened to me if I had a wife as dear and as good and as pretty as the one you have."

Browne was silent for a long time, his arm still about Drusilla's shoulder. At the end of the long hall he said with decision in his voice:

"Chase, you may tell your clients that so far as I am concerned they may have the beastly island and everything that goes with it. I'm through with it all. I shall discharge Britt and——"

"My dear boy, it's most magnanimous of you," cried Chase merrily. "But I'm afraid you can't decide the question in such an off-hand, degage manner. Sleep over it. I've come to the conclusion that it isn't so much of a puzzle as to how you are to get the island as how to get off of it. Take good care of him, Mrs. Browne. Don't let him talk."

She held out her hand to him impulsively. There was an unfathomable, unreadable look in her dark eyes. As he gallantly lifted the cold fingers to his lips, she said, without taking her almost hungry gaze from his face:

"Thank you, Mr. Chase. I shall never forget you."

He stood there looking after them as they went up the stairway, a puzzled expression in his face. After a moment he shook his head and smiled vaguely as he said to himself:

"I guess he'll be a good boy from now on." But he wondered what it was that he had seen or felt in her sombre gaze.

In fifteen minutes he was sound asleep in his room, his long frame relaxed, his hands wide open in utter fatigue. He dreamed of a Henner girl with Genevra's brilliant face instead of the vague, greenish features that haunt the vision with their subtle mysticism.

He was awakened at noon by Selim, who obeyed his instructions to the minute. The eager Arab rubbed the soreness and stiffness out of his master's body with copious applications of alcohol.

"I'm sorry you awoke me, Selim," said the master enigmatically. Selim drew back, dismayed. "You drove her away." Selim's eyes blinked with bewilderment. "I'm afraid she'll never come back."

"Excellency!" trembled on the lips of the mystified servant.

"Ah, me!" sighed the master resignedly. "She smiled so divinely. Henner girls never smile, do they, Selim? Have you noticed that they are always pensive? Perhaps you haven't. It doesn't matter. But this one smiled. I say," coming back to earth, "have they begun to distil the water? I've got a frightful thirst."

"Yes, excellency. The Sahib Browne is at work. One of the servants became sick to-day. Now no one is drinking the water. Baillo is bringing in ice from the storehouses and melting it, but the supply is not large. Sahib Browne will not let them make any more ice at present." Nothing more was said until Chase was ready for his rolls and coffee. Then Selim asked hesitatingly, "Excellency, what is a bounder? Mr. Browne says——"

"I believe I did call him a bounder," interrupted Chase reminiscently. "I spoke hastily and I'll give him a chance to demand an explanation. He'll want it, because he's an American. A bounder, Selim? Well," closing one eye and looking out of the window calculatingly, "a bounder is a fellow who keeps up an acquaintance with you by persistently dunning you for money that you've owed to him for four or five years. Any one who annoys you is a bounder."

Selim turned this over in his mind for some time, but the puzzled air did not lift from his face.

"Excellency, you will take Selim to live with you in Paris?" he said after a while wistfully. "I will be your slave."

"Paris? Who the dickens said anything about Paris?" demanded Chase, startled.

"Neenah says you will go there to live, sahib."

"Um—um," mused Chase; "what does she know about it?"

"Does not the most glorious Princess live in Paris?"

"Selim, you've been listening to gossip. It's a frightful habit to get into. Put cotton in your ears. But if I were to take you, what would become of little Neenah?"

"Oh, Neenah?" said Selim easily. "If she would be a trouble to you, excellency, I can sell her to a man I know."

Chase looked blackly at the eager Arab, who quailed.

"You miserable dog!"

Selim gasped. "Excellency!"

"Don't you love her?"

"Yes, yes, sahib—yes! But if she would be a trouble to you—no!" protested the Arab anxiously. Chase laughed as he came to appreciate the sacrifice his servant would make for him.

"I'll take you with me, Selim, wherever I go—and if I go—but, my lad, we'll take Neenah along, too, to save trouble. She's not for sale, my good Selim." The husband of Neenah radiated joy.

"Then she may yet be the slave of the most glorious Princess! Allah is great! The most glorious one has asked her if she will not come with her——"

"Selim," commanded the master ominously, "don't repeat the gossip you pick up when I'm not around."



CHAPTER XXXII

THE TWO WORLDS

Two days and nights crept slowly into the past, and now the white people of the chateau had come to the eve of their last day's stay on the island of Japat: the probationary period would expire with the sun on the following day, the anniversary of the death of Taswell Skaggs. The six months set aside by the testator as sufficient for all the requirements of Cupid were to come to an inglorious end at seven o'clock on March 29th. According to the will, if Agnes Ruthven and Robert Browne were not married to each other before the close of that day all of their rights in the estate were lost to them.

To-morrow would be the last day of residence required, but, alack! Was it to be the last that they were to spend in the world-forsaken land? As they sat and stared gloomily at the spotless sea there was not a single optimist among them who felt that the end was near. Not a few were convincing themselves that their last days literally would be spent on the island.

No later than that morning a steamer—a small Dutch freighter—had come to a stop off the harbour. But it turned tail and fled within an hour. No one came ashore; the malevolent tug went out and turned back the landing party which was ready to leave the ship's side. The watchers in the chateau knew what it was that the tug's captain shouted through his trumpet at a safe distance from the steamer. Through their glasses they saw the boat's crew scramble back to the deck of the freighter; the action told the story plainer than words.

The black and yellow flags at the end of the company's pier lent colour to a grewsome story!

The hopeless look deepened in the eyes of the watchers. They saw the steamer move out to sea and then scuttle away as if pursued by demons.

Hollingsworth Chase alone maintained a stubborn air of confidence and unconcern. He may not have felt as he looked, but something in his manner, assumed or real, kept the fires of hope alight in the breasts of all the others.

"Don't be downhearted, Bowles," he said to the moping British agent. "You'll soon be managing the bank again and patronising the American bar with the same old regularity."

"My word, Mr. Chase," groaned Bowles, "how can you say a thing like that? I daresay they've blown the bank to Jericho by this time. Besides, there won't be an American bar. And, moreover, I don't intend to stay a minute longer than I have to on the beastly island. This taste of the old high life has spoiled me for everything else. I'm going back to London and sit on the banks of the Serpentine until it goes dry. Stay here? I should rather say not."

There had been several vicious assaults upon the gates by the infuriated islanders during the day following the rescue of the heirs. Their rage and disappointment knew no bounds. For hours they acted like madmen; only the most determined resistance drove them back from the gates. Some powerful influence suddenly exerted itself to restore them to a state of calmness. They abruptly gave up the fruitless, insensate attacks upon the walls and withdrew to the town, apparently defeated. The cause was obvious: Rasula had convinced them that Death already was lifting his hand to blot out the lives of those who opposed them.

Bobby Browne was accomplishing wonders in the laboratory. He seldom was seen outside the distilling room; his assiduity was marked, if not commented upon. Hour after hour he stood watch over the water that went up in vapour and returned to the crystal liquid that was more precious than rubies and sapphires. He was redeeming himself, just as he was redeeming the water from the poison that had made it useless. He experimented with lizards: the water as it came from the springs brought quick death to the little reptiles. The fishes in the aquarium died before it occurred to any one to remove them from the noxious water.

Drusilla kept close to his side during all of these operations. She seemed afraid or ashamed to join the others; she avoided Lady Deppingham as completely as possible. Her effort to be friendly when they were thrown together was almost pitiable.

As for Lady Agnes, she seemed stricken by an unconquerable lassitude; the spirits that had controlled her voice, her look, her movements, were sadly missing. It was with a most transparent effort that she managed to infuse life into her conversation. There were times when she stood staring out over the sea with unseeing eyes, and one knew that she was not thinking of the ocean. More than once Genevra had caught her watching Deppingham with eyes that spoke volumes, though they were mute and wistful.

From time to time the sentinels brought to Lord Deppingham and Chase missives that had been tossed over the walls by the emissaries of Rasula. They were written by the leader himself and in every instance expressed the deepest sympathy for the plague-ridden chateau. It was evident that Rasula believed that the occupants were slowly but surely dying, and that it was but a question of a few days until the place would become a charnel-house. With atavic cunning he sat upon the outside and waited for the triumph of death.

"There's a paucity of real news in these gentle messages that annoys me," Chase said, after reading aloud the last of the epistles to the Princess and the Deppinghams. "I rejoice in my heart that he isn't aware of the true state of affairs. He doesn't appreciate the real calamity that confronts us. The Plague? Poison? Mere piffle. If he only knew that I am now smoking my last—the last cigarette on the place!" There was something so inconceivably droll in the lamentation that his hearers laughed despite their uneasiness.

"I believe you would die more certainly from lack of cigarettes than from an over-abundance of poison," said Genevra. She was thinking of the stock she had hoarded up for him in her dressing-table drawer, under lock and key. It occurred to her that she could have no end of housewifely thrills if she doled them out to him in niggardly quantities, at stated times, instead of turning them over to him in profligate abundance.

"I'm sure I don't know," he said, taking a short inhalation. "I've never had the poison habit."

"I say, Chase, can't you just see Rasula's face when he learns that we've been drinking the water all along and haven't passed away?" cried Deppingham, brightening considerably in contemplation of the enemy's disgust.

"And to think, Mr. Chase, we once called you 'the Enemy,'" said Lady Agnes in a low, dreamy voice. There was a far-away look in her eyes.

"I appear to have outlived my usefulness in that respect," he said. He tossed the stub of his cigarette over the balcony rail. "Good-bye!" he said, with melancholy emphasis. Then he bent an inquiring look upon the face of the Princess.

"Yes," she said, as if he had asked the question aloud. "You shall have three a day, that's all."

"You'll leave the entire fortune to me when you sail away, I trust," he said. The Deppinghams were puzzled.

"But you also will be sailing away," she argued.

"I? You forget that I have had no orders to return. Sir John expects me to stay. At least, so I've heard in a roundabout way."

"You don't mean to say, Chase, that you'll stay on this demmed Island if the chance comes to get away," demanded Lord Deppingham earnestly. The two women were looking at him in amazement.

"Why not? I'm an ally, not a deserter."

"You are a madman!" cried Lady Agnes. "Stay here? They would kill you in a jiffy. Absurd!"

"Not after they've had another good long look at my warships. Lady Deppingham," he replied, with a most reassuring smile.

"Good Lord, Chase, you're not clinging to that corpse-candle straw, are you?" cried his lordship, beginning to pace the floor. "Don't be a fool! We can't leave you here to the mercy of these brutes. What's more, we won't!"

"My dear fellow," said Chase ruefully, "we are talking as though the ship had already dropped anchor out there. The chances are that we will have ample time to discuss the ethics of my rather anomalous position before we say good-bye to each other. I think I'll take a stroll along the wall before turning in."

He arose and leisurely started to go indoors. The Princess called to him, and he paused.

"Wait," she said, coming up to him. They walked down the hallway together. "I will run upstairs and unlock the treasure chest. I do not trust even my maid. You shall have two to-night—no more."

"You've really saved them for me?" he queried, a note of eagerness in his voice. "All these days?"

"I have been your miser," she said lightly, and then ran lightly up the stairs.

He looked after her until she disappeared at the top with a quick, shy glance over her shoulder. Then he permitted his spirits to drop suddenly from the altitude to which he had driven them. An expression of utter dejection came into his face; a haggard look replaced the buoyant smile.

"God, how I love her—how I love her!" he groaned, half aloud.

She was coming down the stairs now, eager, flushed, more abashed than she would have had him know. Without a word she placed the two cigarettes in his outstretched palm. Her eyes were shining.

In silence he clasped her hand and led her unresisting through the window and out upon the broad gallery. She was returning the fervid pressure of his fingers, warm and electric. They crossed slowly to the rail. Two chairs stood close together. They sat down, side by side. The power of speech seemed to have left them altogether.

He laid the two cigarettes on the broad stone rail. She followed the movement with perturbed eyes, and then leaned forward and placed her elbows on the rail. With her chin in her hands, she looked out over the sombre park, her heart beating violently. After a long time she heard him saying hoarsely:

"If the ship should come to-morrow, you would go out of my life? You would go away and leave me here—"

"No, no!" she cried, turning upon him suddenly. "You could not stay here. You shall not!"

"But, dearest love, I am bound to stay—I cannot go And, God help me, I want to stay. If I could go into your world and take you unto myself forever—if you will tell me now that some day you may forget your world and come to live in mine—then, ah, then, it would be different! But without you I have no choice of abiding place. Here, as well as anywhere."

She put her hands over her eyes.

"I cannot bear the thought of—of leaving you behind—of leaving you here to die at the hands of those beasts down there. Hollingsworth, I implore you—come! If the opportunity comes—and it will, I know—you will leave the island with the rest of us?"

"Not unless I am commanded to do so by the man who sent me here to serve these beasts, as you call them."

"They do not want you! They are your enemies!"

"Time will tell," he said sententiously. He leaned over and took her hand in his. "You do love me?"

"You know I do—yes, yes!" she cried from her heart, keeping her face resolutely turned away from him. "I am sick with love for you. Why should I deny the thing that speaks so loudly for itself—my heart! Listen! Can you not hear it beating? It is hurting me—yes, it is hurting me!"

He trembled at this exhibition of released, unchecked passion, and yet he did not clasp her in his arms.

"Will you come into my world, Genevra?" he whispered. "All my life would be spent in guarding the love you would give to me—all my life given to making you love me more and more until there will be no other world for you to think of."

"I wish that I had not been born," she sobbed. "I cannot, dearest—I cannot change the laws of fate. I am fated—I am doomed to live forever in the dreary world of my fathers. But how can I give you up? How can I give up your love? How can I cast you out of my life?"

"You do not love Prince Karl?"

"How can you ask?" she cried fiercely. "Am I not loving you with all my heart and soul?"

"And you would leave me behind if the ship should come?" he persisted, with cruel insistence. "You will go back and marry that—him? Loving me, you will marry him?" Her head dropped upon her arm. He turned cold as death. "God help and God pity you, my love. I never knew before what your little world means to you. I give you up to it. I crawl back into the one you look down upon with scorn. I shall not again ask you to descend to the world where love is."

Her hand lay limp in his. They stared bleakly out into the night and no word was spoken.

The minutes became an hour, and yet they sat there with set faces, bursting hearts, unseeing eyes.

Below them in the shadows, Bobby Browne was pacing the embankment, his wife drawn close to his side. Three men, Britt, Saunders and Bowles, were smoking their pipes on the edge of the terrace. Their words came up to the two in the gallery.

"If I have to die to-morrow," Saunders, the bridegroom, was saying, with real feeling in his voice, "I should say, with all my heart, that my life has been less than a week long. The rest of it was nothing. I never was happy before—and happiness is everything."



CHAPTER XXXIII

THE SHIPS THAT PASS

The next morning was rainy. A quick, violent storm had rushed up from the sea during the night.

Chase, after a sleepless night, came down and, without waiting for his breakfast, hurried out upon the gallery overlooking the harbour. Genevra was there before him, pale, wistful, heavy-eyed—standing in the shelter of a huge pilaster. The wind swept the thin, swishing raindrops across the gallery on both sides of her position. He came up from behind. She was startled by the sound of his voice saying "good-morning."

"Hollingsworth," she said drearily, "do you believe he will come to-day?"

"He?" he asked, puzzled.

"My uncle. The yacht was to call for me not later than to-day."

"I remember," he said slowly. "It may come, Genevra. The day is young."

She clasped his hand convulsively, a desperate revolt in her soul.

"I almost hope that it may not come for me!" she said, her voice shaking with suppressed emotion.

"I am not so selfish as to wish that, dear one," he said, after a moment of inconceivable ecstasy in which his own longing gave the lie to the words which followed.

"It will not come. I feel it in my heart. We shall die here together, Hollingsworth. Ah, in that way I may escape the other life. No, no! What am I saying? Of course I want to leave this dreadful island—this dreadful, beautiful, hateful, happy island. Am I not too silly?" She was speaking rapidly, almost hysterically, a nervous, flickering smile on her face.

"Dear one," he said gently, "the yacht will come. If it should not come to-day, my cruisers will forestall its mission. As sure as there is a sea, those cruisers will come." She looked into his eyes intently, as if afraid of something there. "Oh, I'm not mad!" he laughed. "You brought a cruiser to me one day; I'll bring one to you in return. We'll be quits."

"Quits?" she murmured, hurt by the word.

"Forgive me," he said, humbled.

"Hollingsworth," she said, after a long, tense scrutiny of the sea, "how long will you remain on this island?"

"Perhaps until I die—if death should come soon. If not, then God knows how long."

"Listen to me," she said intensely. "For my sake, you will not stay long. You will come away before they kill you. You will! Promise me. You will come—to Paris? Some day, dear heart? Promise!"

He stared at her beseeching face in wide-eyed amazement. A wave of triumphant joy shot through him an instant later. To Paris! She was asking him—but then he understood! Despair was the inspiration of that hungry cry. She did not mean—no, no!

"To Paris?" he said, shaking his head sadly. "No, dearest one. Not now. Listen: I have in my bag upstairs an offer from a great American corporation. I am asked to assume the management of its entire business in France. My headquarters would be in Paris. My duties would begin as soon as my contract with Sir John Brodney expires. The position is a lucrative one; it presents unlimited opportunities. I am a comparatively poor man. The letter was forwarded to me by Sir John. I have a year in which to decide."

"And you—you will decline?" she asked.

"Yes. I shall go back to America, where there are no princesses of the royal blood. Paris is no place for the disappointed, cast-off lover. I can't go there. I love you too madly. I'd go on loving you, and you—good as you are, would go on loving me. There is no telling what would come of it. It will be hard for me to—to stay away from Paris—desperately hard. Sometimes I feel that I will not be strong enough to do it, Genevra."

"But Paris is huge, Hollingsworth," she argued, insistently, an eager, impelling light in her eyes. "We would be as far apart as if the ocean were between us."

"Ah, but would we?" he demanded.

"It is almost unheard-of for an American to gain entree to our—to the set in which—well, you understand," she said, blushing painfully in the consciousness that she was touching his pride. He smiled sadly.

"My dear, you will do me the honour to remember that I am not trying to get into your set. I am trying to induce you to come into mine. You won't be tempted, so that's the end of it. Beastly day, isn't it?" He uttered the trite commonplace as if no other thought than that of the weather had been in his mind. "By the way," he resumed, with a most genial smile, "for some queer, un-masculine reason, I took it into my head last night to worry about the bride's trousseau. How are you going to manage it if you are unable to leave the island until—well, say June?"

She returned his smile with one as sweetly detached as his had been, catching his spirit. "So good of you to worry," she said, a defiant red in her cheeks. "You forget that I have a postponed trousseau at home. A few stitches here and there, an alteration or two, some smart summer gowns and hats—Oh, it will be so simple. What is it? What do you see?"

He was looking eagerly, intently toward the long, low headland beyond the town of Aratat.

"The smoke! See? Close in shore, too! By heaven, Genevra—there's a steamer off there. She's a small one or she wouldn't run in so close. It—it may be the yacht! Wait! We'll soon see. She'll pass the point in a few minutes."

Scarcely breathing in their agitation, they kept the glasses levelled steadily, impatiently upon the distant point of land. The smoke grew thicker and nearer. Already the citizens of the town were rushing to the pier. Even before the vessel turned the point, the watchers at the chateau witnessed a most amazing performance on the dock. Half a hundred natives dropped down as if stricken, scattering themselves along the narrow pier. For many minutes Chase was puzzled, bewildered by this strange demonstration. Then, the explanation came to him like a flash.

The people were simulating death! They were posing as the victims of the plague that infested the land! Chase shuddered at this exhibition of diabolical cunning. Some of them were writhing as if in the death agony. It was at once apparent that the effect of this manifestation would serve to drive away all visitors, appalled and terrified. As he was explaining the ruse to his mystified companion, the nose of the vessel came out from behind the tree-covered point.

An instant later, they were sending wild cries of joy through the chateau, and people were rushing toward them from all quarters.

The trim white thing that glided across the harbour, graceful as a bird, was the Marquess's yacht!

It is needless to describe the joyous gale that swept the chateau into a maelstrom of emotions. Every one was shouting and talking and laughing at once; every one was calling out excitedly that no means should be spared in the effort to let the yacht know and appreciate the real situation.

"Can the yacht take all of us away?" was the anxious cry that went round and round.

They saw the tug put out to meet the small boat; they witnessed the same old manoeuvres; they sustained a chill of surprise and despair when the bright, white and blue boat from the yacht came to a stop at the command from the tug.

There was an hour of parleying. The beleaguered ones signalled with despairing energy; the flag, limp in the damp air above the chateau, shot up and down in pitiful eagerness.

But the small boat edged away from close proximity to the tug and the near-by dock. They spoke each other at long and ever-widening range. At last, the yacht's boat turned and fled toward the trim white hull.

Almost before the startled, dazed people on the balcony could grasp the full and horrible truth, the yacht had lifted anchor and was slowly headed out to sea.

It was unbelievable!

With stupefied, incredulous eyes, they saw the vessel get quickly under way. She steamed from the pest-ridden harbour with scarcely so much as a glance behind. Then they shouted and screamed after her, almost maddened by this final, convincing proof of the consummate deviltry against which they were destined to struggle.

Chase looked grimly about him, into the questioning, stricken faces of his companions. He drew his hand across his moist forehead.

"Ladies and gentlemen," he said seriously and without the faintest intent to jest, "we are supposed to be dead!"

There was a single shriek from the bride of Thomas Saunders; no sound left the dry lips of the other watchers, who stood as if petrified and kept their eyes glued upon the disappearing yacht.

"They have left me here to die!" came from the stiffened lips of the Princess Genevra. "They have deserted me. God in heaven!"

"Look!" cried Chase, pointing to the dock. Half a dozen glasses were turned in that direction.

The dying and the dead were leaping about in the wildest exhibition of gleeful triumph!

The yacht slipped into the unreachable horizon, the feathery cloud from its stack lying over against the leaden sky, shaped like a finger that pointed mockingly the way to safety.

White-faced and despairing, the watchers turned away and dragged themselves into the splendid halls of the building they had now come to regard as their tomb. Their voices were hushed and tremulous; they were looking at the handwriting on the wall. They had not noticed it there before.

Saunders was bravely saying to his distracted wife, as he led her down the marble hall:

"Don't give up the ship, dear. My word for it, we'll live to see that garden out Hammersmith way. My word for it, dear."

"He's trying so hard to be brave," said Genevra, oppressed by the knowledge that it was her ship that had played them false. "And Agnes? Look, Hollingsworth! She is herself again. Ah, these British women come up under the lash, don't they?"

Lady Deppingham had thrown off her hopeless, despondent air; she was crying out words of cheer and encouragement to those about her. Her eyes were flashing, her head was erect and her voice was rich with inspiration.

"And you?" asked Chase, after a moment. "What of you? Your ship has come and gone and you are still here—with me. You almost wished for this."

"No. I almost wished that it would not come. There is a distinction," she said bitterly. "It has come and it has disappointed all of us—not one alone."

"Do you remember what it was that Saunders said about having lived only a week, all told? The rest was nothing."

"Yes—but you have seen that Saunders still covets life in a garden at Hammersmith Bridge. I am no less human than Mr. Saunders."

All day long the islanders rejoiced. Their shouts could be plainly heard by the besieged; their rifles cracked sarcastic greetings from the forest; bullets whistled gay accompaniments to the ceaseless song: "Allah is great! Allah is good!"

No man in the despised house of Taswell Skaggs slept that night. The guard was doubled at all points open to attack. It was well that the precaution was taken, for the islanders, believing that the enemy's force had been largely reduced by the polluted water, made a vicious assault on the lower gates. There was a fierce exchange of shots and the attackers drew away, amazed, stunned by the discovery that the beleaguered band was as strong and as determined as ever.

At two in the morning, Deppingham, Browne and Chase came up from the walls for coffee and an hour's rest.

"Chase, if you don't get your blooming cruiser here before long, we'll be as little worth the saving as old man Skaggs, up there in his open-work grave," Deppingham was saying as he threw himself wearily into a chair in the breakfast room. They were wet and cold. They had heard Rasula's minions shouting derisively all night long: "Where is the warship? Where is the warship?"

"It will come. I am positive," said Chase, insistent in spite of his dejection. They drank their coffee in silence. He knew that the others—including the native who served them—were regarding him with the pity that one extends to the vain-glorious braggart who goes down with flying colours.

He went out upon the west gallery and paced its windswept length for half an hour or more. Then, utterly fagged, he threw himself into an unexposed chair and stared through tired eyes into the inscrutable night that hid the sea from view. The faithless, moaning, jeering sea!

When he aroused himself with a start, the grey, drizzly dawn was upon him. He had slept. His limbs were stiff and sore; his face was drenched by the fine rain that had searched him out with prankish glee.

The next instant he was on his feet, clutching the stone balustrade with a grip of iron, his eyes starting from his head. A shout arose to his lips, but he lacked the power to give it voice. For many minutes he stood there, rooted to the spot, a song of thanksgiving surging in his heart.

He looked about him at last. He was alone in the gallery. A quaint smile grew in his face; his eyes were bright and full of triumph. After a full minute of preparation, he made his way toward the breakfast room, outwardly as calm as a May morning.

Browne and Deppingham were asleep in the chairs. He shook them vigorously. As they awoke and stared uncomprehendingly at the disturber of their dreams, he said, in the coolest, most matter-of-fact way:

"There's an American cruiser outside the harbour. Get up!"



CHAPTER XXXIV

IN THE SAME GRAVE WITH SKAGGS

Down in the village of Aratat there were signs of a vast commotion. Early risers and the guards were flying from house to house, shouting the news. The citizens piled from their couches and raced pell-mell into the streets, unbelieving, demoralised. With one accord they rushed to the water front—men, women and children. Consternation was succeeded by utter panic. Rasula's wild shouts went unheeded. He screamed and fought to secure order among his people, but his efforts were as nought against the storm of terror that confronted him.

Outside the harbour lay the low, savage-looking ship. Its guns were pointed directly at the helpless town; its decks were swarming with white-clothed men; it was alive and it glowered with rage in its evil eyes.

The plague was forgotten! The strategy that had driven off the ships of peace was lost in the face of this ugly creature of war. No man grovelled on the dock with the convulsions of death; no man hearkened to the bitter, impotent words of the single wise man among them. Rasula's reign of strategy was ended.

Howling like a madman, he tried to drive the company's tug out to meet the sailors and urge them to keep away from the pest-ridden island. It was like pleading with a mountain avalanche.

"They will not fire! They dare not!" he was shrieking, as he dashed back and forth along the dock. "It is chance! They do not come for Chase! Believe in me! The tug! The tug! They must not land!" But others were raging even more wildly than he, and they were calling upon Allah for help, for mercy; they were shrieking maledictions upon themselves and screaming praises to the sinister thing of death that glowered upon them from its spaceless lair.

The crash of the long-unused six-pounder at the chateau, followed almost immediately by a great roar from one of the cruiser's guns, brought the panic to a crisis.

The islanders scattered like chaff before the wind, looking wild-eyed over their shoulders in dread of the pursuing cannon-ball, dodging in and out among the houses and off into the foothills.

Rasula, undaunted but crazed with disappointment, stuck to his colours on the deserted dock. He cursed and raved and begged. In time, two or three of the more canny, realising that safety lay in an early peace offering, ventured out beside him. Others followed their example and still others slunk trembling to the fore, their voices ready to protest innocence and friendship and loyalty.

They had heard of the merciless American gunner and they knew, in their souls, that he could shoot the island into atoms before nightfall.

The native lawyer harangued them and cursed them and at last brought them to understand, in a feeble way, that no harm could come to them if they faced the situation boldly. The Americans would not land on British soil; it would precipitate war with England. They would not dare to attempt a bombardment: Chase was a liar, a mountebank, a dog! After shouting himself hoarse in his frenzy of despair, he finally succeeded in forcing the men to get up steam in the company's tug. All this time, the officers of the American warship were dividing their attention between land and sea. Another vessel was coming up out of the misty horizon. The men on board knew it to be a British man-of-war! At last steam was up in the tug. A hundred or more of the islanders had ventured from their hiding places and were again huddled upon the dock.

Suddenly the throng separated as if by magic, opening a narrow path down which three white men approached the startled Rasula. A hundred eager hands were extended, a hundred voices cried out for mercy, a hundred Mohammedans beat their heads in abject submission.

Hollingsworth Chase, Lord Deppingham and a familiar figure in an ill-fitting red jacket and forage cap strode firmly, defiantly between the rows of humble Japatites. Close behind them came a tall, resolute grenadier of the Rapp-Thorberg army.

"Make way there, make way!" Mr. Bowles was crying, brandishing the antique broadsword that had come down to Wyckholme from the dark ages. "Stand aside for the British Government! Make way for the American!"

Rasula's jaw hung limp in the face of this amazing exhibition of courage on the part of the enemy. He could not at first believe his eyes. Hoarse, inarticulate cries came from his froth-covered lips. He was glaring insanely at the calm, triumphant face of the man from Brodney's, who was now advancing upon him with the assurance of a conqueror.

"You see, Rasula, I have called for the cruiser and it has come at my bidding." Turning to the crowd that surged up from behind, cowed and cringing, Chase said: "It rests with you. If I give the word, that ship will blow you from the face of the earth. I am your friend, people. I would you no harm, but good. You have been misled by Rasula. Rasula, you are not a fool. You can save yourself, even now. I am here as the servant of these people, not as their master. I intend to remain here until I am called back by the man who sent me to you. You have——"

Rasula uttered a shriek of rage. He had been crouching back among his cohorts, panting with fury. Now he sprang forward, murder in his eyes. His arm was raised and a great pistol was levelled at the breast of the man who faced him so coolly, so confidently. Deppingham shouted and took a step forward to divert the aim of the frenzied lawyer.

A revolver cracked behind the tall American and Rasula stopped in his tracks. There was a great hole in his forehead; his eyes were bursting; he staggered backward, his knees gave way; and, as the blood filled the hole and streamed down his face, he sank to the ground—dead!

The soldier from Rapp-Thorberg, a smoking pistol in his hand, the other raised to his helmet, stepped to the side of Hollingsworth Chase.

"By order of Her Serene Highness, sir," he said quietly.

"Good God!" gasped Chase, passing his hand across his brow. For a full minute there was no sound to be heard on the pier except the lapping of the waves. Deppingham, repressing a shudder, addressed the stunned natives.

"Take the body away. May that be the end of all assassins!"

* * * * *

The King's Own came alongside the American vessel in less than an hour. Accompanied by the British agent, Mr. Bowles, Chase and Deppingham left the dock in the company's tug and steamed out toward the two monsters. The American had made no move to send men ashore, nor had the British agent deemed it wise to ask aid of the Yankees in view of the fact that a vessel of his own nation was approaching.

Standing on the forward deck of the swift little tug, Chase unconcernedly accounted for the timely arrival of the two cruisers.

"Three weeks ago I sent out letters by the mail steamer, to be delivered to the English or American commanders, wherever they might be found. Undoubtedly they were met with in the same port. That is why I was so positive that help would come, sooner or later. It was very simple. Lord Deppingham, merely a case of foresightedness. I knew that we'd need help and I knew that if I brought the cruisers my power over these people would never be disturbed again."

"My word!" exclaimed the admiring Bowles.

"Chase, you may be theatric, but you are the most dependable chap the world has ever known," said Deppingham, and he meant it.

The warships remained off the harbour all that day. Officers from both ships were landed and escorted to the chateau, where joy reigned supreme, notwithstanding the fact that the grandchildren of the old men of the island were morally certain that their cause was lost. The British captain undertook to straighten out matters on the island. He consented to leave a small detachment of marines in the town to protect Chase and the bank, and he promised the head men of the village, whom he had brought aboard the ship, that no mercy would be shown if he or the American captain was compelled to make a second visit in response to a call for aid. To a man the islanders pledged fealty to the cause of peace and justice: they shouted the names of Chase and Allah in the same breath, and demanded of the latter that He preserve the former's beard for all eternity.

The King's Own was to convey the liberated heirs, their goods and chattels, their servants and their penates (if any were left inviolate) to Aden, whither the cruiser was bound. At that port a P. & O. steamer would pick them up. One white man elected to stay on the island with Hollingsworth Chase, who steadfastly refused to desert his post until Sir John Brodney indicated that his mission was completed. That one man was the wearer of the red jacket, the bearer of the King's commission in Japat, the undaunted Mr. Bowles, won over from his desire to sit once more on the banks of the Serpentine and to dine forever in the Old Cheshire Cheese.

The Princess Genevra, the wistful light deepening hourly in her blue-grey eyes, avoided being alone with the man whom she was leaving behind. She had made up her mind to accept the fate inevitable; he had reconciled himself to the ending of an impossible dream. There was nothing more to say, except farewell. She may have bled in her soul for him and for the happiness that was dying as the minutes crept on to the hour of parting, but she carefully, deliberately concealed the wounds from all those who stood by and questioned with their eyes.

She was a princess of Rapp-Thorberg!

The last day dawned. The sun smiled down upon them. The soft breeze of the sea whispered the curse of destiny into their ears; it crooned the song of heritage; it called her back to the fastnesses where love may not venture in.

The chateau was in a state of upheaval; the exodus was beginning. Servants and luggage had departed on their way to the dock. Palanquins were waiting to carry the lords and ladies of the castle down to the sea. The Princess waited until the last moment. She went to him. He was standing apart from the rest, coldly indifferent to the pangs he was suffering.

"I shall love you always," she said simply, giving him her hand. "Always, Hollingsworth." Her eyes were wide and hopeless, her lips were white.

He bowed his head. "May God give you all the happiness that I wish for you," he said. "The End!"

She looked steadily into his eyes for a long time, searching his soul for the hope that never dies. Then she gently withdrew her hands and stood away from him, humbled in her own soul.

"Yes," she whispered. "Good-bye."

He straightened his shoulders and drew a deep breath through compressed nostrils. "Good-bye! God bless you," was all that he said.

She left him standing there; the wall between them was too high, too impregnable for even Love to storm.

Lady Deppingham came to him there a moment later. "I am sorry," she said tenderly. "Is there no hope?"

"There is no hope—for her!" he said bitterly. "She was condemned too long ago."

On the pier they said good-bye to him. He was laughing as gaily and as blithely as if the world held no sorrows in all its mighty grasp.

"I'll look you up in London," he said to the Deppinghams. "Remember, the real trial is yet to come. Good-bye, Browne. Good-bye, all! You may come again another day!"

The launch slipped away from the pier. He and Bowles stood there, side by side, pale-faced but smiling, waving their handkerchiefs. He felt that Genevra was still looking into his eyes, even when the launch crept up under the walls of the distant ship.

Slowly the great vessel got under way. The American cruiser was already low on the horizon. There was a single shot from the King's Own: a reverberating farewell!

Hollingsworth Chase turned away at last. There were tears in his eyes and there were tears in those of Mr. Bowles.

"Bowles," said he, "it's a rotten shame they didn't think to say good-bye to old man Skaggs. He's in the same grave with us."



CHAPTER XXXV

A TOAST TO THE PAST

The middle of June found the Deppinghams leaving London once more, but this time not on a voyage into the mysterious South Seas. They no longer were interested in the island of Japat, except as a reminiscence, nor were they concerned in the vagaries of Taswell Skaggs's will.

The estate was settled—closed!

Mr. Saunders was mentioned nowadays only in narrative form, and but rarely in that way. True, they had promised to visit the little place in Hammersmith if they happened to be passing by, and they had graciously admitted that it would give them much pleasure to meet his good mother.

Two months have passed since the Deppinghams departed from Japat, "for good and all." Many events have come to pass since that memorable day, not the least of which was the exchanging of L500,000 sterling, less attorneys' and executors' fees. To be perfectly explicit and as brief as possible, Lady Deppingham and Robert Browne divided that amount of money and passed into legal history as the "late claimants to the Estate of Taswell Skaggs."

It was Sir John Brodney's enterprise. He saw the way out of the difficulty and he acted as pathfinder to the other and less perceiving counsellors, all of whom had looked forward to an endless controversy.

The business of the Japat Company and all that it entailed was transferred by agreement to a syndicate of Jews!

Never before was there such a stupendous deal in futures.

Soon after the arrival in England of the two claimants, it became known that the syndicate was casting longing eyes upon the far-away garden of rubies and sapphires. There was no hope of escape from a long, bitter contest in the courts. Sir John perhaps saw that there was a possible chance to break the will of the testator; he was an old man and he would hardly live long enough to fight the case to the end. In the interregnum, his clients, the industrious islanders, would be slaving themselves into a hale old age and a subsequently unhallowed grave, none the wiser and none the richer than when the contest began, except for the proportionately insignificant share that was theirs by right of original possession. Sir John took it upon himself to settle the matter while his clients were still in a condition to appreciate the results. He proposed a compromise.

It was not so much a question of jurisprudence, he argued, as it was a matter of self-protection for all sides to the controversy—more particularly that side which assembled the inhabitants of Japat.

And so it came to pass that the Jews, after modifying some twenty or thirty propositions of their own, ultimately assumed the credit of evolving the plan that had originated in the resourceful head of Sir John Brodney, and affairs were soon brought to a close.

The grandchildren of the testators were ready to accept the best settlement that could be obtained. Theirs was a rather forlorn hope, to begin with. When it was proposed that Agnes Deppingham and Robert Browne should accept L250,000 apiece in lieu of all claims, moral or legal, against the estate, they leaped at the chance.

They had seen but little of each other since landing in England, except as they were thrown together at the conferences. There was no pretence of intimacy on either side; the shadow of the past was still there to remind them that a skeleton lurked behind and grinned spitefully in its obscurity. Lady Agnes went in for every diversion imaginable; for a wonder, she dragged Deppingham with her on all occasions. It was a most unexpected transformation; their friends were puzzled. The rumour went about town that she was in love with her husband.

As for Bobby Browne, he was devotion itself to Drusilla. They sailed for New York within three days after the settlement was effected, ignoring the enticements of a London season—which could not have mattered much to them, however, as Drusilla emphatically refused to wear the sort of gowns that Englishwomen wear when they sit in the stalls. Besides, she preferred the Boston dressmakers. The Brownes were rich. He could now become a fashionable specialist. They were worth nearly a million and a quarter in American dollars. Moreover, they, as well as the Deppinghams, were the possessors of rubies and sapphires that had been thrust upon them by supplicating adversaries in the hour of departure—gems that might have bought a dozen wives in the capitals of Persia; perhaps a score in the mountains where the Kurds are cheaper. The Brownes naturally were eager to get back to Boston. They now had nothing in common with Taswell Skaggs; Skaggs is not a pretty name.

Mr. Britt afterward spent three weeks of incessant travel on the continent and an additional seven days at sea. In Baden-Baden he happened upon Lord and Lady Deppingham. It will be recalled that in Japat they had always professed an unholy aversion for Mr. Britt. Is it cause for wonder then that they declined his invitation to dine in Baden-Baden? He even proposed to invite their entire party, which included a few dukes and duchesses who were leisurely on their way to attend the long-talked-of nuptials in Thorberg at the end of June.

The Syndicate, after buying off the hereditary forces, assumed a half interest in the Japat Company's business; the islanders controlled the remaining half. The mines were to be operated under the management of the Jews and eight hours were to constitute a day's work. The personal estate passed into the hands of the islanders, from whom Skaggs had appropriated it in conjunction with John Wyckholme. All in all, it seemed a fair settlement of the difficulty. The Jews paid something like L2,000,000 sterling to the islanders in consideration of a twenty years' grant. Their experts had examined the property before the death of Mr. Skaggs; they were not investing blindly in the great undertaking.

Mr. Levistein, the president of the combine, after a long talk with Lord Deppingham, expressed the belief that the chateau could be turned into a money-making hotel if properly advertised—outside of the island. Deppingham admitted, that if he kept the prices up, there was no reason in the world why the better class of Jews should not flock there for the winter.

Before the end of June, representatives of the combine, attended by officers of the court, a small army of clerks, a half dozen lawyers and two capable men from the office of Sir John Brodney, set sail for Japat, provided with the power and the means to effect the transfer agreed upon in the compromise.

In Vienna the Deppinghams were joined by the Duchess of N———, the Marchioness of B——— and other fashionables. In a week all of them would be in the Castle at Thorberg, for the ceremony that now occupied the attention of social and royal Europe.

"And to think," said the Duchess, "she might have died happily on that miserable island. I am sure we did all we could to bring it about by steaming away from the place with the plague chasing after us. Dear me, how diabolically those wretches lied to the Marquess. They said that every one in the chateau was dead, Lady Deppingham—and buried, if I am not mistaken."

The party was dining with one of the Prince Lichtensteins in the Hotel Bristol after a drive in the Haupt-Allee.

"My dog, I think, was the only one of us who died, Duchess," said Lady Agnes airily. "And he was buried. They were that near to the truth."

"It would be much better for poor Genevra if she were to be buried instead of married next week," lamented the Duchess.

"My dear, how ridiculous. She isn't dead yet, by any manner of means. Why bury her? She's got plenty of life left in her, as Karl Brabetz will learn before long." Thus spoke the far-sighted Marchioness, aunt of the bride-to-be. "It's terribly gruesome to speak of burying people before they are actually dead."

"Other women have married princes and got on very well," said Prince Lichtenstein.

"Oh, come now, Prince," put in Lord Deppingham, "you know the sort of chap Brabetz is. There are princes and princes, by Jove."

"He's positively vile!" exclaimed the Duchess, who would not mince words.

"She's entering upon a hell of a—I mean a life of hell," exploded the Duke, banging the table with his fist. "That fellow Brabetz is the rottenest thing in Europe. He's gone from bad to worse so swiftly that public opinion is still months behind him."

"Nice way to talk of the groom," said the host genially. "I quite agree with you, however. I cannot understand the Grand Duke permitting it to go on—unless, of course, it's too late to interfere."

"Poor dear, she'll never know what it is to be loved and cherished," said the Marchioness dolefully.

Lord and Lady Deppingham glanced at each other. They were thinking of the man who stood on the dock at Aratat when the King's Own sailed away.

"The Grand Duke is probably saying the very thing to himself that Brabetz's associates are saying in public," ventured a young Austrian count.

"What is that, pray?"

"That the Prince won't live more than six months. He's a physical wreck to-day—and a nervous one, too. Take my word for it, he will be a creeping, imbecile thing inside of half a year. Locomotor ataxia and all that. It's coming, positively, with a sharp crash."

"I've heard he has tried to kill that woman in Paris half a dozen times," remarked one of the women, taking it as a matter of course that every one knew who she meant by "that woman." As no one even so much as looked askance, it is to be presumed that every one knew.

"She was really responsible for the postponement of the wedding in December, I'm told. Of course, I don't know that it is true," said the Marchioness, wisely qualifying her gossip. "My brother, the Grand Duke, does not confide in me."