I saw the light, the sun's rays bright on the cliff tops. Once in the tunnel beyond that I could keep my pursuers at bay with my revolver, even if I had to fight every inch of my way to freedom.
And then, just as I approached the barricade of earth-filled bags, Leroux and the man Raoul emerged from the tunnel's mouth and ran toward me.
If I had been alone and unencumbered, I believe I could have spurted across the open and won free. But with Jacqueline in my arms it was impossible.
I stopped behind the barricade.
Even so I was fortunate, for had they gained the cave before I did they would have had me at their mercy like a rat trapped in a hole.
They saw me and drew back hastily within the tunnel's mouth. I was panting with the weight of my unconscious burden, and I did not know what to do. My mind was filled with rage against my fate, and I shouted curses at them and strode up and down, behind the bags.
Presently I saw something white fluttering from the tunnel. It was a white handkerchief upon a stick of wood, and slowly and gingerly Raoul emerged into the open.
At that instant I fired. The bullet whipped past his face, and with an oath he dropped the stick and handkerchief too, and scuttled back to shelter.
Then Leroux's voice hailed me from the tunnel.
"Hewlett!" he called, and there was no trace of mockery in his tones now, "will you come out and talk with me? Will you meet me in the open, if you prefer?"
I fired another shot in futile rage. It struck the cliff and sent a stone flying into the stream.
Then silence followed. And I took Jacqueline and carried her back into the little hollow place. I put my hand upon her breast.
It stirred. She breathed faintly, though she showed no sign of consciousness.
And then I acted as a trapped animal would act. I raged up and down the tunnel from cataract to cave, and at each end I fired wildly, though there was no sign of any guard. Why should their guards expose themselves to fire at me when they had me at their mercy?
They could surprize me from either end, and I suppose I thought by this trick to maintain the illusion of having some companion. Heaven knows what was in my mind. But now I stood beneath that awful cataract firing at the blind rock, and now I was back behind the earth-bags shooting into the tunnel.
And again I was at Jacqueline's side, crouching over her, holding her hand in mine, pressing my lips to hers, imploring her to live for my sake, or, if she could not live, to open her eyes once more and speak to me.
So the afternoon wore away. The sun had sunk behind the cliffs. I had fired away all but six of my cartridges. Then the memory of my similar act of folly before came home to me. I grew more calm.
I understood Leroux's intentions—he meant to surprize me in the night when I was worn out, or when I made a blind dash in the dark for the tunnel.
I felt my way around the cave with the faint hope that there might be some other egress there.
There was none, but I made out a recess which I had not perceived, about one-half as large as the cave itself, and opening into it by a small passage just large enough to give admittance to a single person. Here I should have only one front to defend.
So I carried Jacqueline inside and began laboriously to drag the bags of earth into this last refuge. Before it had grown quite dark I had barricaded Jacqueline and myself within a place the size of a hall bedroom enclosed upon three sides with rock.
And there I waited for the end.
What an eternity that was!
I strained my ears to hear approaching steps. I beard the gurgle of the stream and the slow drip of water from the rocks, but nothing more. The star-light was just bright enough to prevent an absolute surprize.
But I was utterly fatigued. My eyes alone, which bore the burden of the defence, remained awake; the rest of me was dead, from heavy hands to feet, and the body which I could hardly have dragged down to the stream again.
I waited for the end. I sat beside Jacqueline, holding her hand with one of mine, and my revolver in the other. There was a faint flutter at her wrist. I fancied that it had grown stronger during the past half-hour.
But I was unprepared to hear her whisper to me, and when she spoke I was alert in a moment.
"Paul!" she said faintly.
"Jacqueline!"
"Paul! Bend down. I want to speak to you. Do you know I have been conscious for a long time, my dear? I have been thinking. Are you distressed because of me?"
"My dear!" I said; and that was all that I could say. I clasped her cold little hand tightly in mine.
"I don't know whether I shall live, Paul," she went on. "But now things have become much clearer than they were. When you wanted to take me through the tunnel I knew that you were wrong. I knew that even if we found my father I must still send you away, my dear. God does not mean for us to be for one another. Don't you see why? It is because there is the blood of a dead man between us that cannot be wiped away.
"That is the cause of our misfortunes here, and they will never end, even if you can beat Leroux—because of that. So it could never have been. Yes, I knew that last night when I lay by you, and I was thinking of it and praying hard that I might see clearly."
Her voice broke off from weakness, and for a long time she lay there, and I clasped her hand and waited, and my eyes searched the space beyond the bags. How long would they delay?
Presently Jacqueline spoke again.
"Do you know, Paul, I don't think life is such a good thing as it used to seem," she said. "I think that I could bear a great deal that I would once have thought impossible. I think I could yield to Leroux and be his wife to save your life, Paul."
"No, Jacqueline."
"Yes, Paul. If I live, my duty is with my father. He needs me, and he would never leave the château now that his fears have grown so strong. And, though he might come to no harm, I cannot leave him. And you must leave me, Paul, because—because of what is between us. You must go to Leroux and tell him so. You love me, Paul?"
"Always, Jacqueline," I whispered.
She put her arms about my neck.
"I love you, Paul," she said. "It seems so easy to say it in the dark, and it used to be so hard. And I want to tell you something. I have always remembered a good deal more than you believed. Only it was so dear, that comradeship of ours, that I would not let myself remember anything except that I had you.
"And do you know what I admired and loved you for, even when you thought my mind unstable and empty? How true you were! It was that, dear. It was your honour, Paul.
"That was why, when I remembered everything that dreadful night in the snow, the revulsion was so terrible. I ran away in horror. I could not believe that it was true—and yet I knew it was true.
"And Leroux was waiting there and found me. I did not want to leave you, but he told me there was Père Antoine's cabin close by, and that you would come to no harm. And he made me believe—you had stolen my money as well. But I never believed that, and I only taunted you with it to drive you away for your own sake."
She drew me weakly toward her and went on:
"Bend lower. Bend very near. Do you remember, Paul—in the train going to Quebec—I lay awake all night and cried, at first for happiness, to think you loved me, and then for shame, because I had no right—though I did not remember who he was at the time, the shock had been so great. That night—lying in my berth—I was shameless. I slipped the wedding ring from my finger and hid it away so that you should not know—because I loved you, Paul. And now that we are to part forever, and perhaps I am to die, I can speak to you from my heart and tell you, dear. Kiss me—as though I were your wife, Paul.
"So you will go to Leroux?" she added presently.
"Is that your will, Jacqueline?"
"Yes, dear," she said. "Because we have fought and now we are beaten, Paul."
I bowed my head. I knew that she spoke the truth. Slowly the passions cleared from my own heart—passion of hate, passion of love. I knew at last that I was vanquished. For, now that Jacqueline lay there so weak, so helpless, and thinking all our past was but a dream, there was nothing but to yield. I could not fight any more.
Even though, by some miracle, the tunnel lay clear before us, to move her meant her death. So I would yield, to save her life, and with me Leroux might deal as he chose.
So I left her and climbed across the bags and went down toward the stream.
But before I had reached it a dark figure slipped from among the shadows of the rocks and came toward me; and by the faint starlight I saw the face of Pierre Caribou!
I was bewildered, for Pierre seemed like one of those dream figures of the past; he might have come into my life long ago, but not to-day, nor yesterday.
He stopped me and held me by both shoulders, and he drew me into the recesses of the rocks and bent his wizened old face forward toward mine.
"Ah, monsieur, so you did not obey old Pierre Caribou and stay in the cave," he said.
"Pierre, I did not know that you would return," I answered. "I thought that we could find the same road that you had taken."
"Never mind," the Indian answered, looking at me strangely. "All finish now. Diable take Leroux. His time come. Diable show me!"
"How?" I answered, startled.
"All finish," said Pierre inexorably, and, as I watched him, a superstitious fear crept over me. He, who had cringed, even when he gave the command, now cringed no longer, and there was a look on his old face that I had only seen on one man's before—on my father's, the night he died.
"Pierre, where is Leroux?" I whispered.
"No matter," he answered. "All finish now."
"Shall I surrender to him or shall I fight?"
"No matter," he said once again. "M'sieur, suppose you go back to ma'm'selle, and soon Simon come. His diable lead him to you. His diable tell you what to say. All finish now!"
He walked past me noiselessly, a tenuous shadow, and his bearing was as proud as that of his race had been in the long ago, when they were lords where their white masters ruled. He entered the passage at the back of the mine, through which I had come when I encountered Lacroix the first time with his gold.
And as he passed I thought I saw Lacroix's face peering out at me through the shadows of the caves. I started toward him. Then I saw only the face of the cliff. My mind was playing me tricks; I thought it had created that apparition out of my thoughts.
I went back to Jacqueline and took my seat upon the earth-bag barricade. I had my revolver in my hand, but it was not loaded. I threw the cartridges upon the floor.
It seemed only a few minutes before a voice hailed me from the tunnel.
"M. Hewlett! Are you prepared to speak with M. Leroux?"
It was Raoul's voice, and I answered yes.
A moment later Leroux came from the tunnel toward me. I got down from the barricade and met him at the stream. He stood upon one side and I at the other, and the stream gurgled and played between us.
"Paul Hewlett," said Leroux, "you have made a good fight. By God, you have fought well! But you are done for. I offer you terms."
"What terms?" I asked.
"The same as before."
"You planned to murder me," I answered, but with no bitterness.
"Yes, that is true," answered Leroux. "But circumstances were different then from what they are tonight. I am no murderer. I am a man of business. And, within business limits, I keep my word. If I proposed to break it, it was because I had no other way. Besides, you had me in your power. Now you are in mine.
"I thought then that you were in Carson's pay. That if I let you go you would betray—certain things you might have discovered. But you came here because you were infatuated with Mme. d'Epernay. Well, I can afford to let you go; for, though my instincts cry out loudly for your death, I am a business man, and I can suppress them when it has to be done. In brief, M. Hewlett, you can go when you choose."
"M. Leroux," I answered, "I will say something to you for your own sake, and Mme. d'Epernay's, that I would not deign to say to any other man. She is as pure as the best woman in the land. I found her wandering in the street. I saved her from the assault of your hired ruffians. I tried to procure a room for her at the Merrimac, and when they refused her, I gave up my own apartment to her and went away."
"But you went back!" he cried. "You went back, Hewlett!"
"I can tell you no more," I answered. "Do you believe what I have said to you?"
He looked hard into my face.
"Yes," he said simply. "And it makes all the difference in the world to me."
And at that moment, in spite of all, I felt something that was not far from affection toward the man.
"Père Antoine will marry you?" I asked.
"Yes," he replied.
"And her father?"
"Is safe in the château, playing with his wheel and amassing a fortune in his dreams."
"One word more," I continued. "Mme. d'Epernay is very ill. She was struck by one of those bullets that you fired through the door. Wait!" for he had started. "I think that she will live. The wound cannot have pierced a vital part. But we must be very gentle in moving her. You had better bring the sleigh here, and you and I will lift her into it. And then—I shall not see her again."
I went back toward the cave. But I could not bring myself to see Jacqueline.
Instead, I paced the tunnel to and fro, wondering what my life was going to be in future. Less than three weeks before no thought of love had stirred me, and Jacqueline was undreamed of. Now she had entered into my heart and twined herself inextricably around its roots.
That I should love her till I died I did not doubt at all.
Her last words had been in the nature of a farewell. There was no more to say. Not even good-bye. I must go before that old, insatiable longing for her arose in me again.
I saw her in my mind's eyes as clearly as though she stood before me. Her loving, gracious presence, her sweet, pure face, her courage, her tenderness—all these were for Leroux. Nothing remained for me, except my memories.
I should have to make a great deal of my life. I had always believed that life was only a prelude to greater and finer things. I was not sure; I am not sure to-day; but if the life that is to come is not the realization of our unfulfilled desires, then nothing matters here. I was thinking of that as I paced the tunnel. And in that way I felt that, in a measure, Jacqueline was still mine.
"Everything that is free," she had said to me, "thoughts, will and dreams." That part was mine; and that could never be taken away.
I had reached the verge of the cataract and stood beside the little platform, looking down. There was no star now like that which had guided me in the morning, but the sky was fair and the air mild. I gazed in awe at the great stream of water, sending its ceaseless current down into the troubled lake below.
How many ages it had done that! Yet even that must end some day, as everything ends—even life, thank God!
And then I saw Lacroix again. I was sure of it now. He was peering after me from among the rocks, and, as I turned, he was scuttling away into the tunnel.
I followed him. I had always mistrusted the man; more, even, than Leroux. I felt that his furtive presence there portended something more evil than my own fate and Jacqueline's must be.
I followed him hotly; but he must have known every fissure in the cliff, for he vanished before my eyes, apparently through the solid rock, and when I reached the place of his disappearance I could find no sign of any passage there.
Well, there was no use in following him further. I paced the tunnel restlessly. The sleigh ought to be at the mine in five minutes more. I turned back to take a last look at the cataract.
The sublime grandeur of those thousand tons of water, shot from the glacier's edge above, still held me in its spell of awe. I cast my eyes toward the château and over the frozen lake toward the distant, unknown mountains.
Then I turned resolutely away.
And at that moment I heard Leroux's voice hailing me, and looked round to see him emerge from the tunnel at my side. He was staring in bewilderment at the cataract.
"Hewlett, I don't know what possessed me to take the wrong turn to-night!" he cried. "I have come through that tunnel a hundred times and never missed the path before."
He swung round petulantly, and at that moment a shadow glided out of the darkness and stood in front of him. It was Pierre Caribou, lean, sinewy and old. He blocked the path and faced Leroux in silence.
Leroux looked at him, and an oath broke from his lips as he read the other's purpose upon his face. Squaring his mighty shoulders and clenching his fists, he leaped at him headlong.
Pierre stepped quietly aside, and Simon measured his full length within the tunnel. But, when he had scrambled to his feet with a bellowing challenge, Pierre was in front of him again.
"What are you here for?" roared Leroux, but in a quavering voice that did not sound like his own. "Get out of the way or I'll smash your face!"
The Indian still blocked the passage. "Your time come now, Simon. All finish now," he answered.
Simon drew back a pace and watched him, and I heard him breathing like one who has run a race.
"You come here one, two year ago," Pierre continued. "You eat up home of M. Duchaine, my master. Old M. Duchaine my master, too. I belong here. You eat up all, come back, eat up some more. Then you sell Mlle. Jacqueline to Louis d'Epernay. You made her run 'way to New York. I ask your diable when your time come. Your diable he say wait. I wait. Mlle. Jacqueline come back. I ask your diable again. He say wait some more. Now your diable tell me he send you here to-night because your time come, and all finish now."
The face that Simon turned on me was not in the least like his own. It was that of a hopeless man who knows that everything he had prized is lost. He had never cowered before anyone in his life, I think, but he cowered now before Pierre Caribou.
"Hewlett!" he cried in a high-pitched, quavering voice, "help me throw this old fool out of the way."
I spoke to Pierre. "Our quarrel is at an end," I said. "I am going away. You must go, too."
Pierre Caribou did not relax an inch of ground.
Then a roar burst from Leroux's lips, and he flung himself upon the Indian in the same desperate way as I had experienced, and in an instant the two men were struggling at the edge of the platform.
It was impossible for me to intervene, and I could only stand by and stare in horror. And, as I stared, I saw the face of Lacroix among the rocks again, peering out, with an evil smile upon his lips.
Whether they fought in silence or whether in sound I do not know, for the noise of the cataract rendered the battle a dumb pantomime.
Pierre had pulled the Frenchman out to the middle of the ledge and was trying to force him over. But Leroux was clinging with one hand to the cliff and with the other he beat savagely upon his enemy's face, so that the blood covered both of them. But Pierre did not seem to feel the blows.
Leroux, one-handed, was at a disadvantage. He grasped his antagonist again, and the death-grapple began.
It was a marvel that they could engage in so terrific a fight upon the ice-coated ledge and hold their balance there. But I saw that they were in equipoise, for they were bending all the tension of each muscle to the fight, so that they remained almost motionless, and, thigh to thigh, arm to arm, breast to breast, each sought to break the other's strength. And I saw that, when one was broken, he would not yield slowly, but, having spent the last of his strength, would collapse like a crumpled cardboard figure and go down into the boiling lake.
The cataract's half-sphere of crystal clearness framed them as though they formed some dreadful picture.
They bent and swayed, and now Leroux was forcing Pierre's head and shoulders backward by the weight of his bull's body. But the Indian's sinews, toughened by years of toil to steel, held fast; and just as Leroux, confident of victory, shifted his feet and inclined forward, Pierre changed his grasp and caught him by the throat.
Leroux's face blackened and his eyes started out. His great chest heaved, and he tore impotently at his enemy's strong fingers that were shutting out air and light and consciousness. They rocked and swayed; then, with a last convulsive effort, Leroux swung Pierre off his feet, raised him high in the air, and tried to dash his body against the projecting rock at the tunnel's mouth.
But still the Indian's fingers held, and as his consciousness began to fade Leroux staggered and slipped; and with a neighing whine that burst from his constricted throat, a shriek that pierced the torrent's roar, he slid down the cataract, Pierre locked in his arms.
I cried out in horror, but leaned forward, fascinated by the dreadful spectacle. I saw the bodies glide down the straight jet of water, as a boy might slide down a column of steel, and plunge into the black cauldron beneath, around whose edge stood the mocking and fantastic figures of ice. The seething lake tossed them high into the air, and the second cataract caught them and flung them back toward the Old Angel.
Their waters played with them and spun them round, caught them, and let them go, and roared and foamed about them as they bobbed and danced their devil's jig, waist-high, in one another's arms.
At last they slid down into the depths of the dark lake, to lie forever there in that embrace. And still the cataracts played on, sounding their loud, triumphant, never-ending tune.
I was running down the tunnel again. I was running to Jacqueline, but something diverted me. It was the face of Lacroix, peering at me from among the crevices of the rocks with the same evil smile. I knew from the look on it that he had seen all and had been infinitely pleased thereby.
I caught at him; I wanted to get my hands on him and strangle him, too, and fling him down, and stamp his features out of human semblance. But he eluded me and darted back into the cliff.
I followed him hard. This time I did not mean to let him go.
Lacroix was running toward the gold-mine. He made no effort to dodge into any of the unknown recesses of the caves, but ran at full speed across the open space and plunged into the tunnel leading to the shore by the château.
I caught him near the entrance and held him fast.
He struggled in my grasp and screamed.
"Go back! For the love of God, go back, monsieur!" he shrieked. "Let me go! Let me go!"
He fought so desperately that he slipped out of my hands and darted into the mine again, taking the tunnel which led toward the Old Angel, and thence wound back toward the château.
I caught him again before the cave where Jacqueline lay. I wound my arms around him. A dreadful suspicion was creeping into my mind.
He made no attempt to fight me, but only to escape, and his face was hideously stamped with fear.
"Let me go!" he howled. "Ah, you will repent it! Monsieur, let me go! I will give you a half-share in the gold. What do you want with me?"
What did I want? I did not know. It must have been the same instinct that leads one to stamp upon a noxious insect. I think it was his joy in the hideous spectacle beneath the cataract that had made me long to kill him.
But now a dreadful fear was dawning on me.
"Jacqueline!" I screamed.
"I have not seen her," he replied. "Now let me go! Ah, mon Dieu, will you never let me go? It is too late!"
Suddenly he grew calm.
"It is too late," he said in a monotonous voice, "You have killed both of us!"
And, with the sweat still on his forehead, he stood looking maliciously at me.
"If you had let me go," he said, "you would have died just as you are going to die."
I saw the face of the cliff quiver; I saw an immense rock, half-way up, leap into the air and seem to hang there; then the ground was upheaved beneath my feet, and with a frightful roar the rocky walls swayed and fell together.
And the rivulet became a cataract that surged over me and filled my ears with tumult and sealed my eyes with sleep.
Darkness impenetrable about me, and a thick air that I breathed with great gasps that hardly brought relief to my choking throat. And a voice out of the darkness crying ceaselessly in my ears:
"Help me! Help me!"
In that nightmare I saw again those awful scenes as vividly as though they had been etched in phosphorus before my eyes. I saw the last struggle of Pierre and Leroux, and I pursued Lacroix along the tunnel. I saw the cliff toppling forward, and the rock poised in mid-air.
And the voice cried: "Help me! Help me!" and never ceased.
I raised myself and tried to struggle to my feet. I found that I could move my limbs freely, I tried to rise upon my knees, but the roof struck my head. I stretched my arms out, and I touched the wall on either side of me.
I must have been stunned by the concussion of the landslide. By a miracle I had not been struck.
"Help me! Help me!"
I tried to find the voice. I crawled three feet toward it, and the wall stopped me. But the voice was there. It came from under the wall. I felt about me in the darkness, and my hand touched something damp. I whipped it back in horror. It was the face of a man.
There was only the face. Where the body and limbs ought to have been was only rock. The face was on my side of a wall of rock, pinning down the body that lay outstretched beyond.
I recognized the voice now. It was that of Philippe Lacroix.
"Ah, mon Dieu! Help me! Help me!"
He continued to repeat the words in every conceivable tone, and his suffering was pitiable. I forgot my own troubles as I tried to aid him. All my efforts were vain. There were tons of rock above him, and under the inch or two of space where the rock rested above the ground I felt the edge of a burlap bag.
He had been pinned beneath the bags of earth and gold which he had prized so dearly; the golden rocks were grinding out his life. He was dying—and he could not take his treasures to that place to which he must go.
I felt one hand come through the tiny opening in the wall and grasp at me.
"Who is it?" he mumbled. "Is that you, Hewlett? For God's sake, kill me!"
I crouched beside him, but I did not know what to say or do. I could only wait there, that he might not die alone.
"Give me a knife!" he mumbled again, clutching at me. "A knife, Hewlett! Don't leave me to die like this! Bring Père Antoine and my mother. I want to tell her—to tell her——"
He muttered in his delirium until his voice died away. I thought that he would never speak again. But presently he seemed to revive again to the consciousness of his surroundings.
"Are you with me, Hewlett?" he whispered.
I placed my hand in his, and he clutched at it with feverish force.
"You will have the gold, Hewlett," he muttered, apparently ignorant that I, too, was a prisoner and in hardly better plight. "You are the last of the four. I tried to kill you, Hewlett."
I said nothing, and he repeated querulously, between his gasps: "I tried to kill you, Hewlett. Are you going to leave me to die alone in the dark now?"
"No," I answered. "It doesn't matter, Lacroix." And, really, it did not matter.
"I wanted to kill you," his voice rambled on. "Leroux is dead. I watched him die. I thought if—you died, too, no one but I would know the secret of the gold. I tried to murder you. I blew up the tunnel!"
He paused a while, and again I thought he was dying, but once more he took up the confession.
"There was nearly a quarter of a ton of blasting powder and dynamite in the cave. You didn't know. You went about so blindly, Hewlett. I watched you when I talked with you that night here. How long ago it must have been! When was that?"
I did not tell him it was yesterday. For it seemed immeasurably long ago to me as well.
"It was stored there," he said. "We had brought it up from St. Boniface by sleigh—so carefully. Leroux intended to begin mining as soon as Louis returned. And when he died I meant to kill you both, so that the gold should all be mine. I told you it was here because I thought you meant to kill me, but I meant to kill you when you had made an end of Leroux. And you killed me. Damn you!" he snarled. "Why did you not let me go?"
He paused, and I heard him gasp for breath. His fingers clutched at my coat-sleeve again and hooped themselves round mine like claws of steel.
"I had a knife—once," he resumed, relapsing into his delirium; "but I left it behind me and the police got it. Isn't it odd, Leroux," he rambled on, "that one always leaves something behind when one has killed a man? But the newspapers made no mention about the knife. You didn't know he was dead, did you, Leroux, for all your cleverness, until that fool Hewlett left that paper upon the table? You knew enough to send me to jail, but you didn't know that it was I who killed him. Help me!" He screamed horribly. "He is here, looking at me!"
"There is nobody here, Philippe," I said, trying to soothe his agony of soul. What a poor and stained soul it was, travelling into the next world alone! "There is nobody but me, Philippe!"
"You lie!" he raved. "Louis is here! He has come for me! Give me your knife, Hewlett. It is for him, not for me. He deserved to die. He tricked me after we had found the gold. He tricked me twice. He told Leroux, thinking that he would win his gratitude and get free from the man's power. And the second time he told Carson."
My heart was thumping as he spoke. I hardly dared to hope his words were true.
"He was my friend," he mumbled. "We were friends since we were boys. We would have kicked Leroux into the street if he had dared to enter our homes. But we owed so much money. And he discovered—what we had done. He wanted our family interest; he wanted to make use of us. And when we found the mine, Louis thought we would never be in need of money again. But Leroux was pressing him, threatening him. And so he told him. Then there were three of us in the secret.
"Leroux had formed a lumber company with Carson, but he did not tell him about the gold. He formed his scheme with Louis. They said nothing to me; they wanted to leave me out. Louis was to get the girl and sell his rights to Simon. But afterward, when he had spent the money Simon had given him, he thought he could get more out of Carson. So he went to him and told the secret. That made four of us—four of us, where there should have been only two."
"What did you do?" I asked, though it was like conducting a postmortem upon a murderer's corpse.
"I went to New York to get my share. I wasn't going to be ousted, I, who had been one of the discoverers. I don't know how much Carson paid Louis, but I meant to demand half. I thought he had the money in his pocket.
"I followed him all that afternoon after he had left Carson's office. I watched him in the street. At night he went to a room somewhere—at the top of a tall building. I followed him. When I got in I found a woman there. Louis was talking to her and threatening her. He said she was his wife. How could she be his wife when he had married Jacqueline Duchaine?
"I didn't care—it was no business of mine. I couldn't see them, because there was a curtain in the way. There was no light in the bedroom. There was a light in the room in which I was. I put it out, so that neither of them should see my face. She might have betrayed me, you know, Simon.
"He spun round when the light went out, and pushed the curtain aside. I was waiting for that. I had calculated my blow. I stabbed him. It was a good blow, though it was delivered in the dark. He only cried out once. But the woman screamed, and a dog flew at me, and I couldn't find his money. So I ran away.
"And then there were only three of us who knew the secret. Then Simon died and there were only two, and now there are only Hewlett and I, and he is dead, poor fool, and I have my gold here. For God's sake give me a knife, Simon!"
His fingers tore at my sleeve in his last agony, and I was tempted sorely. And it was his own knife that I had. The irony of it!
He muttered once or twice and cried out in fear of the man whom he had slain. I heard him gasp a little later. Then the hand fell from my sleeve. And after that there was no further sound.
"Paul!"
It was the merest whisper from the wall. I thought it was a trick of my own mind. I dared not hope.
"Paul! Dearest!"
This was no fancy born of a delirious brain and the thick fumes of dynamite. It came from the wall a little way ahead of me. I crawled the three feet that the little cave afforded and put my hands upon the rock, feeling its surface inch by inch. There was a crevice there, not large enough to have permitted a bird to pass—the merest fissure.
"Jacqueline! Is that you, dear?" I called.
"Where are you, Paul?" she whispered back.
"Behind the wall," I answered. "You are not hurt, Jacqueline?"
"I am lying where you left me, dear. Paul, I—I heard."
"You heard?" I answered dully. What did it matter now?
"Why didn't you tell me, Paul? But never mind. I am so glad, dearest! Can you come through to me?"
I struggled to tear the rocks away; I beat and bruised my hands in vain against them.
"Soon," I muttered. "Soon. Can you breathe well, Jacqueline?"
"It is all open, Paul. It is nearly dawn now."
"I will come when it grows light, Jacqueline," I babbled. "When it grows light!"
She did not know that it would never grow light for me. Again I flung myself against the walls of my prison, battering at them till the blood dripped from my hands. Again and again I flung myself down hopelessly, and then I tried again, clutching at every fragment that protruded into the cave.
And at last, when my despair had mastered me—it grew light.
For a sunbeam shot like a finger through the crevice and quivered upon the floor of the cave. And overhead, where I had never thought to seek, where I had thought three hundred feet of eternal rock pressed down on me, I saw the quiver of day through half a dozen feet of tight-packed débris from the glacier's mouth.
I raised myself and tore at it and sent it flying. I thrust my hands among the stones and tore them down like the tiles from a rotten roof.
I heard a shout; hands were reached down to me and pulled me up, and I was on my feet upon a hillside, looking into the keen eyes of Père Antoine and the face of the Indian squaw.
And the Eskimo dog was barking at my side.
Only one thing marred the happiness of our reunion, and that was the loss of Jacqueline's father.
We had talked much over what had happened, and ten days later, when Jacqueline had recovered from the shock and from what proved to be, after all, only a flesh-wound, we had visited the scene of our rescue by the old priest.
The Indian woman had met him as she was returning home, and had told him of our danger, and he had started out before dawn, to find that there was no longer any entrance to the tunnel. Wandering in bewilderment upon the mountains, he had reached the place where I was buried at the moment of my final effort to break through the débris overhead.
Although the explanation seemed an impossible one, there was none other.
The cliff, riddled with tunnels and eaten out by its numerous subterranean streams, had fallen. The charge of dynamite exploded, as it happened, beneath that part which buttressed the entire structure, combining with the pressure of the glacier above, had thrown the mountain on its side, filling the lake with several million tons of ice and obliterating all traces of the château, which lay buried beneath its waters.
That was Père Antoine's explanation, and we realized at once that it was useless to search for Charles Duchaine. The whole aspect of the region had been changed; there was neither glacier nor cataract, and the lake, swollen to twice its size and height, slept peacefully beneath its covering of ice and snow.
When we returned to the cabin we were amazed to see a sleigh standing outside, and dogs feeding. Two men were seated at the priests table, smoking.
"Diable, monsieur, don't you keep a stove in your house?" shouted a well-known voice to Père Antoine. Then, as Jacqueline and I approached the entrance, the man turned and sprang toward us with outstretched hands that gripped ours and wrung them till we cried out in pain.
It was Alfred Dubois.
But I was stupefied to see the second man who rose and advanced toward me with a shrewd smile. For it was Tom Carson!
Presently I was telling my story—except for that part which more intimately concerned myself and Jacqueline, and the narrative of the murder, which I gave only as Lacroix had confessed it to me.
A look of incredulity deepened on Tom's shrewd old face till, at the end, he burst out explosively at me:
"Hewlett, I didn't think I was a damned fool before—I beg your pardon, miss. If any man had told me that I would have knocked him down. But I am, I am, and want you to be my manager."
"Do you mean that I have lied to you?" I asked indignantly.
"Every word, Hewlett—every word, my son. That is why I want you back with me. First you leave my employment without offering any reason; then you take hold of my business affairs and try to pull off a deal over my head, and then you tell me a yarn about a castle falling into a lake."
"But, M. Carson," interposed the priest, "I myself have seen this château many times. And I have gone to the entrance and looked from the mountain, too, and it is no longer there."
"Never was," said Carson. "You fellows get so lonesome up in these wilds that you have to see things."
"But I heard the explosion."
"Artillery practice down the Gulf."
"Listen to me, M. Carson!" exploded Dubois. "Did I not say that I would drive you here myself because I was anxious about a friend of mine and his young bride who were in the clutches of that scoundrel, Simon Leroux, who killed my brother? And did I not say that they were in the Château Duchaine?"
"Well, there may be a château, somewhere," Carson replied. "In fact, there probably is. This man, d'Epernay, who is said to be dead now, wanted to sell me the biggest gold mine in the world for fifty thousand dollars, and from what I know of Leroux I am ready to believe that he would try to hog it if it really exists. So, as I wanted to see how our lumber development at St. Boniface was getting along, I thought I'd come up here and investigate."
"But how about Leroux?" I cried, more amused now than vexed.
"That," answered Tom, "is precisely why I want to get hold of you again, Mr. Hewlett."
"But here is Mlle. Duchaine!" shouted the old priest in despair.
Tom Carson raised his fat old body about five inches and made Jacqueline what he took to be a bow.
"Pleased to make your acquaintance, miss," he replied. "Ah, well, it doesn't matter. I guess that man, d'Epernay, was lying to me. He wanted to get a cash advance, and I got a little suspicious of him just about then. However, I am ready to look at your gold mine if you want me to."
"You'll have to do some blasting then," I said, nettled. "It's just about two hundred feet below the ground."
"Never mind," said Tom. "Lumber is better than gold. Next time I'm here I shall be glad to have another look around. And now, Hewlett, if you want a job at five thousand a year to start—to start, mind you, you play fair and tell me where Leroux is hiding himself."
I was too mortified to answer him. But I felt Jacqueline slip her hand into mine, and suddenly the memory of the past made Tom's raillery an insignificant affair.
"Mind you," he pursued, "he'll turn up soon. He's got to turn up, because the lumber company's all organized now and in fine running order. What do you say, Hewlett?"
"Nothing," I answered.
"All right," he said, turning away with a shrug of his shoulders. "Unpractical as ever, ain't you? Think it over, my son. Glad to have met you, Mr. Priest, and as I'm always busy I guess Dubois and I will start for home this afternoon."
Jacqueline looked at me, and I shook my head. I didn't want Tom to witness it. But a word from Père Antoine changed the hostile tenor of my thoughts to warm and human ones.
"Messieurs," he said, "doubtless you know what day this is?"
Tom started. "Why, good Lord, it—it's Christmas Day, isn't it?" he asked, a little sheepishly.
"It's a bigger day for us," I said to Tom.
He squinted at me in his shrewd manner; and then he got up from the table and wrung my hand.
"Good luck to you both," he said. "Say, Mr. Dubois, I guess we can pitch our tent here to-night—don't you?"
Alfred Dubois was grappling with our hands again; but his onset was less ferocious, because he had to loose us every now and then to slap me on the back and blow his nose.
"If only la petite Madeleine could be here!" he shouted. And I am sure that was his dinner voice I heard.