The Flaming Jewel

Episode Eight

CUP AND LIP

TWO miles beyond Clinch's Dump, Hal Smith pulled Stormont's horse to a walk. He was tremendously excited.

With naïve sincerity he believed that what he had done on the spur of the moment had been the only thing to do.

By snatching the Flaming Jewel from Quintana's very fingers he had diverted that vindictive bandit's fury from Eve, from Clinch, from Stormont, and had centred it upon himself.

More than that, he had sown the seeds of suspicion among Quintana's own people. They never could discover Salzar's body. Always they must believe that it was Nicolas Salzar and no other who so treacherously robbed them, and who rode away in a rain of bullets, shaking the emblazoned morocco case above his masked head in triumph, derision and defiance.

At the recollection of what had happened, Hal Smith drew bridle, and, sitting his saddle there in the false dawn, threw back his handsome head and laughed until the fading stars overhead swam in his eyes through tears of sheerest mirth.

For he was still young enough to have had the time of his life. Nothing in the Great War had so thrilled him. For, in what had just happened, there was humour. There had been none in the Great Grim Drama.

Still, Smith began to realise that he had taken the long, long chance of the opportunist who rolls the bones with Death. He had kept his pledge to the little Grand Duchess. It was a clean job. It was even good drama —

The picturesque angle of the affair shook Hal Smith with renewed laughter. As a moving picture hero he thought himself the funniest thing on earth.

From the time he had poked a pistol against Sard's fat paunch, to this bullet-pelted ride for life, life had become one ridiculously exciting episode after another.

He had come through like the hero in a best-seller… Lacking only a heroine… If there had been any heroine it was Eve Strayer. Drama had gone wrong in that detail… So perhaps, after all, it was real life he had been living and not drama. Drama, for the masses, must have a definite beginning and ending. Real life lacks the latter. In life nothing is finished. It is always a premature curtain which is yanked by that doddering old stage-hand, Johnny Death.

Smith sat his saddle, thinking, beginning to be sobered now by the inevitable reaction which follows excitement and mirth as relentlessly as care dogs the horseman.

He had had a fine time, – save for the horror of the Rocktrail… He shuddered… Anyway, at worst he had not shirked a clean deal in that ghastly game… It was God's mercy that he was not lying where Salzar lay, ten feet – twenty – a hundred deep, perhaps – in immemorial slime —

He shook himself in his saddle as though to be rid of the creeping horror, and wiped his clammy face.

Now, in the false dawn, a blue-jay awoke somewhere among the oaks and filled the misty silence with harsh grace-notes.

Then reaction, setting in like a tide, stirred more sombre depths in the heart of this young man.

He thought of Riga; and of the Red Terror; of murder at noon-day, and outrage by night. He remembered his only encounter with a lovely child – once Grand Duchess of Esthonia – then a destitute refugee in silken rags.

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

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

As the false dawn began to fade, he loosened hunting coat and cartridge sling, drew from his shirt-bosom the morocco case.

It bore the arms and crest of the Grand Duchess Theodorica of Esthonia.

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

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

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

Gingerly he balanced the emblazoned case, fascinated. Then he replaced the empty tray, closed the box, thrust it into the bosom of his flannel shirt and buttoned it in.

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

Because there still remained a very agreeable rôle for Darragh to play. And he meant to eat it up – as Broadway has it.

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

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

Darragh's sequence of pleasing meditations halted abruptly… To walk out of the life of the little Grand Duchess did not seem to suit his ideas – indefinite and hazy as they were, so far.

He lifted the bridle from the horse's neck, divided curb and snaffle thoughtfully, touched the splendid animal with heel and knee.

As he cantered on into the wide forest road that led to his late uncle's abode, curiosity led him to wheel into a narrower trail running east along Star Pond, and from whence he could take a farewell view of Clinch's Dump.

He smiled to think of Eve and Stormont there together, and now in safety behind bolted doors and shutters.

He grinned to think of Quintana and his precious crew, blood-crazy, baffled, probably already distrusting one another, yet running wild through the night like starving wolves galloping at hazard across a famine-stricken waste.

"Only wait till Stormont makes his report," he thought, grinning more broadly still. "Every State Trooper north of Albany will be after Señor Quintana. Some hunting! And, if he could understand, Mike Clinch might thank his stars that what I've done this night has saved him his skin and Eve a broken heart!"

He drew his horse to a walk, now, for the path began to run closer to Star Pond, skirting the pebbled shallows in the open just ahead.

Alders still concealed the house across the lake, but the trail was already coming out into the starlight.

Suddenly his horse stopped short, trembling, its ears pricked forward.

Darragh sat listening intently for a moment. Then with infinite caution, he leaned over the cantle and gently parted the alders.

On the pebbled beach, full in the starlight, stood two figures, one white and slim, the other dark.

The arm of the dark figure clasped the waist of the white and slender one.

Evidently they had heard his horse, for they stood motionless, looking directly at the alders behind which his horse had halted.

To turn might mean a shot in the back as far as Darragh knew. He was still masked with Salzar's red bandanna. He raised his rifle, slid a cartridge into the breech, pressed his horse forward with a slight touch of heel and knee, and rode slowly out into the star-dusk.

What Stormont saw was a masked man, riding his own horse, with menacing rifle half lifted for a shot! What Eve Strayer thought she saw was too terrible for words. And before Stormont could prevent her she sprang in front of him, covering his body with her own.

At that the horseman tore off his red mask:

"Eve! Jack Stormont! What the devil are you doing over here ?"

Stormont walked slowly up to his own horse, laid one unsteady hand on its silky nose, kept it there while dusty, velvet lips mumbled and caressed his fingers.

"I knew it was a cavalryman," he said quietly. "I suspected you, Jim. It was the sort of crazy thing you were likely to do… I don't ask you what you're up to, where you've been, what your plans may be. If you needed me you'd have told me.

"But I've got to have my horse for Eve. Her feet are wounded. She's in her night-dress and wringing wet. I've got to set her on my horse and try to take her through to Ghost Lake."

Darragh stared at Stormont, at the ghostly figure of the girl who had sunk down on the sand at the lake's edge. Then he scrambled out of the saddle and handed over the bridle.

"Quintana came back," said Stormont. "I hope to reckon with him some day… I believe he came back to harm Eve… We got out of the house… We swam the lake… I'd have gone under except for her – "

In his distress and overwhelming mortification, Darragh stood miserable, mute, irresolute.

Stormont seemed to understand: "What you did, Jim, was well meant," he said. "I understand. Eve will understand when I tell her. But that fellow Quintana is a devil. You can't draw a herring across any trail he follows. I tell you, Jim, this fellow Quintana is either blood-mad or just plain crazy. Somebody will have to put him out of the way. I'll do it if I ever find him."

"Yes… Your people ought to do that… Or, if you like, I'll volunteer… I've a little business to transact in New York, first… Jack, your tunic and breeches are soaked; I'll be glad to chip in something for Eve… Wait a moment – "

He stepped into cover, drew the morocco box from his grey shirt, shoved it into his hip pocket.

Then he threw off his cartridge belt and hunting coat, pulled the grey shirt over his head and came out in his undershirt and breeches, with the other garments hanging over his arm.

"Give her these," he said. "She can button the coat around her waist for a skirt. She'd better go somewhere and get out of that soaking-wet night-dress – "

Eve, crouched on the sand, trying to wring out and twist up her drenched hair, looked up at Stormont as he came toward her holding out Darragh's dry clothing.

"You'd better do what you can with these," he said, trying to speak carelessly… "He says you'd better chuck – what you're wearing – "

She nodded in flushed comprehension. Stormont walked back to his horse, his boots slopping water at every stride.

"I don't know any place nearer than Ghost Lake Inn," he said … "except Harrod's."

"That's where we're going, Jack," said Darragh cheerfully.

"That's your place, isn't it?"

"It is. But I don't want Eve to know it… I think it better she should not know me except as Hal Smith – for the present, anyway. You'll see to that, won't you?"

"As you wish, Jim… Only, if we go to your own house – "

"We're not going to the main house. She wouldn't, anyway. Clinch has taught that girl to hate the very name of Harrod – hate every foot of forest that the Harrod game keepers patrol. She wouldn't cross my threshold to save her life."

"I don't understand, but – it's all right – whatever you say, Jim."

"I'll tell you the whole business some day. But where I'm going to take you now is into a brand new camp which I ordered built last spring. It's within a mile of the State Forest border. Eve won't know that it's Harrod property. I've a hatchery there and the State lets me have a man in exchange for free fry. When I get there I'll post my man… It will be a roof for to-night, anyway, and breakfast in the morning, whenever you're ready."

"How far is it?"

"Only about three miles east of here."

"That's the thing to do, then," said Stormont bluntly.

He dropped one sopping-wet sleeve over his horse's neck, taking care not to touch the saddle. He was thinking of the handful of gems in his pocket; and he wondered why Darragh had said nothing about the empty case for which he had so recklessly risked his life.

What this whole business was about Stormont had no notion. But he knew Darragh. That was sufficient to leave him tranquil, and perfectly certain that whatever Darragh was doing must be the right thing to do.

Yet – Eve had swum Star Pond with her mouth filled with jewels.

When she had handed the morocco box to Quintana, Stormont now realised that she must have played her last card on the utterly desperate chance that Quintana might go away without examining the case.