Chapter 19

THE HIDDEN CHAMBER

Simon turned just in time. The wheel went crashing to the floor and bounded and rebounded out of the room and along the little hall. Philippe jumped in terror from the place where he crouched.

And then the last strand broke, and I was free to slip the cords from my limbs.

"You old fool!" screamed Leroux, catching Duchaine by the wrists. But Charles Duchaine possessed the strength of a madman. He grasped Leroux round the waist and clung to him, and would not be shaken off.

"Kill him!" he screamed. "He is a spy! He has come to betray me to the government!"

What followed was the work of a moment. I saw Jacqueline pull down both broadswords from the wall. She flung one down beside me just as I was staggering to my feet.

Leroux shook off the old man at last. He turned on me. I swung the sword aloft and brought it down upon his skull.

Heaven knows I struck to kill; but my wrist was feeble from the ropes, and the blade fell flat. It drew no blood, but Leroux dropped like a stricken ox upon the floor.

"This way!" gasped the old man.

He pulled at Jacqueline's arm, and half led and half dragged her through the open door behind his chair, I following. Lacroix sprang into the room, called, but whether to us or to the other ruffians I did not know. Leroux sat up and looked about him, dazed and bewildered.

Then I was in the little room with Jacqueline and Duchaine, and he turned and bolted the door behind us. He seemed possessed of all the strength and decision of youth again.

When I stood there before the room had been as dark as pitch, but now a flicker of light was at the far end. A voice cried:

"_M'sieur_! _M'sieur_! I have not forgotten thee!"

It was Pierre Caribou. I saw his figure silhouetted against the light of the flaring candle which he held in his hand.

Duchaine had placed one arm about his daughter's waist, and was urging her along. But she stopped and looked back to me. I saw she held one broadsword in her hand, as I held the other.

"Come, _monsieur_!" she gasped.

But I was too mad with the desire to make an end of Leroux to accompany her. I wanted to go back. I tried to find the bolt of the door in the gloom, but while my fingers were fumbling for it Jacqueline came running back to me.

"Quick, or we are lost!" she cried.

"I am going back," I answered, still fumbling for the holt Duchaine had drawn.

"No! We are safe inside. It is a secret room. My father made it in the first days of his sojourn here in case he was pursued, and none but Pierre and he know the secret. Ah, come, _monsieur_--come!"

She clung to me desperately, and there was an intensity of entreaty in her voice.

I hesitated. There was no sound in the room without, and I believed that the two ruffianly followers were ignorant of what had happened, and had not dared to return after being driven away.

But I meant to kill Leroux, and still felt for the bolt.

As I fumbled there the door splintered suddenly, and Jacqueline cried out. Through the hole I saw the oil-lamp shining in the outer room.

The door splintered again. All at once I realized that Leroux was firing his revolver at the panels. It was fortunate that we both stood at one side, where the latch was.

Then I yielded reluctantly to Jacqueline's soft violence. I followed her through the dark chamber, under an archway of stone, and through a winding passage in the rock. Pierre's candle flickered before us, and in another moment we had squeezed through a narrow opening into a chamber in the cliff.

On the ground were five or six large stones, and Pierre began to fit them into the aperture through which we had passed. In a minute the place was completely sealed, and we four stood and looked breathlessly at one another within what might have been a cenotaph.

Not the slightest sound came from without.

We were standing in a stone chamber, apparently of natural formation, but finished with rough masonry work. It was about the size of a large room, and I could see that it was only a widening of the tunnel itself, which continued through a narrow exit at the farther end, running on into the unknown depths of the cliff.

From the freshness of the air I inferred that it connected with the surface at no distant place.

The entrance through which we had come had been made by blasting at some period, or widened in this way, and then cemented, for the stones which Pierre had fitted into it exactly filled it, so that it was barely distinguishable from where I stood, and I am certain that it would have required a prolonged scrutiny on the part of searchers on the outside to enable them to detect it.

And even then only dynamite or blasting-powder could have forced a path, and it would have been exceedingly difficult to handle such materials within the tunnel without blocking the approach completely, while leaving open the farther exit.

The chamber seemed at one time to have been prepared for such a contingency as had occurred, for there were wool rugs on the stone floor, though they had rotted and partly disintegrated from the dampness.

There were a table and wooden chairs, also partially decayed. The mouldering fringes of some rugs protruded from a bundle wrapped in oil-paper.

Pierre Caribou opened this and shook them out on the ground. Except where their edges had been exposed, they were in good condition, and were thick enough to lie upon without much discomfort.

The interior of the cave was pleasantly warm, though moist.

"M. Duchaine, he make this place in case gov'ment come take him," explained Pierre as he placed the rugs on the floor. "No can find, no can break down stone door. Other way Simon not know--only m'sieur and me. Old Caribou he come that way; he see you tied and know it time to come here. Soon time to kill Simon come as well."

"When in Heaven's name _will_ it come?" I cried.

"Come soon. His _diable_ tell me," answered Pierre Caribou.

The chamber was as silent as the grave, except for the gurgling of a spring of water somewhere and the occasional pattering fall of a drop of moisture from the roof. And truly this might prove our grave, I thought, and none would find our bones in this heart of the cliff through all the ages that would come.

The flight seemed to have exhausted the last flicker of vitality in the old man, for he sank down upon the blankets in a somnolent condition. I could readily understand how his perpetual fear of discovery, intensified through many years of solitude, had grown to be an obsession, and how Leroux's idle threats had stimulated his weakened will to one last effort to escape.

Jacqueline knelt by his side. She paid no attention to me, except that once she asked for water. Pierre brought her some from the spring in a tin cup, and when she raised her head I could see that her lip was swollen from the blow of Leroux's fist.

The old man's hands were moving restlessly. Jacqueline bent over him and whispered, and he stirred and cried out petulantly. He missed his roulette-wheel, his constant companion through those years, his coins, and paper. In his way perhaps he was suffering the most of all.

"I go now," Pierre announced. "To-morrow I come for you, take all through tunnel. You stay here till I come; all sleep till morning."

"I will go with you, Pierre," I said, still under my obsession. But he laid his heavy hand upon my arm and pushed me away.

"You no kill Simon," he answered. "Why you no kill him again when you have sword? Only _diable_ can kill him. When time come _diable_ tell old Caribou. You sleep now. I not work for you now. I go for take my woman and gal safe through tunnel to place I know. When my woman and gal safe I come back to _m'sieur_ and _ma'm'selle_."

It was a brave and simple declaration of first principles, and none the less affecting, because it came from the lips of a faithful, ignorant old man. It was just such simple loyalty that natures like Leroux's never knew, frustrating the most cunning plans based on self-interest.

I realized the strength of Pierre's argument. His duty lay first toward his kin; then he would place his life at his master's service. But he would have to cover many miles before he returned.

He went without a backward glance; but I saw his throat heave, and I knew what the parting meant to him. The feudal loyalty of the past was all his faith.

I flung myself down on my blanket. I was utterly exhausted, and with that dead weariness which precludes sleep. The candle was burning low and was guttering down upon one side, and a pool of hardening grease was spreading over the table-top.

I walked over to the table and blew it out. We must husband it; the darkness in the cave would become unbearable without a candle to light.

I lay down again. The silence was loneliness itself, and not rendered less lonely by the occasional cries of the old man and the drip, drip of water. I could not see anything, and Jacqueline might have been a woman of stone, for she made not the least movement.

But I felt her presence; I seemed to feel her thoughts, to live in her.

At last I spoke to her.

"Jacqueline!"

I heard her start, and knew that she had raised her head and was looking after me. I crawled toward her, dragging my blanket after me. I felt in the darkness for the place where I knew her hand must be and took it in mine.

"Jacqueline," I said, "you know I did not steal your money, don't you?"

"Forgive me, _monsieur_," I heard her whisper.

"Forgive _me_, Jacqueline, for I have brought heavy trouble upon you. But with God's aid I am going to save you both--your father and you--and take you away somewhere where all the past can be forgotten."

She sighed heavily, and I felt a tear drop on my hand.

"Jacqueline!" I cried.

"Ah, M. Hewlett"--the weariness of her voice went to my heart--"it might have been different--if----"

"If what, Jacqueline?"

"If there had not been the blood of a dead man between us," she moaned. "If--you--had not--killed him!"

Her words were a revelation to me, for I learned that she had mercifully been spared the full remembrance of what had happened in the Tenth Street apartment. She thought that it was I who had killed Louis d'Epernay.

And how could I deny this, when to do so would be to bring to her mind the knowledge of her own dreadful guilt?

The dotard stirred and muttered, and she whispered to him and soothed him as though he were a child. Presently he began to breathe heavily, as old men breathe in sleep. But Jacqueline crouched there in the same motionless silence, and I knew that she was awake and suffering.

And then my watch began hammering again, just as the alarm-clock had hammered on that awful night in my apartment when I crouched outside the door, not daring to go in. My mind was working against my will and picturing a thousand possibilities.

What was Leroux doing? He would act with his usual hammer force. All depended on Pierre.

The hours wore away, and we three lay there, two waiting and one dreaming of the old days of youth, no doubt. I tried to light the candle to see the time, but my shaking hand sent it flying across the cave, and when I searched for my matches, I found that the box was empty.

It seemed an eternity since we had come there. It is one thing to wait for dawn and quite another thing to wait where dawn will never come.

It must be day. And still Pierre did not come. As I lay there, listening for his returning footsteps, I heard Jacqueline breathe at last.

She was asleep from weariness after her long night's watch. Somehow the thought that she had passed into the world of dreams comforted me. For a brief time the dreadful accusation of murder had been lifted from my head, and my numbed mind was free to follow my will and leave its mad career of fancy. I could act now.

Why should I not follow where Pierre had led? If Leroux had captured him within his hut, as seemed only too likely, he would never return, and we should wait in vain. And with each hour of waiting our chances to escape grew less.

I resolved to follow the exit for a little distance to see whither it led, and if I could discover the light of day.

So I took my sword and sallied out through the passage in the cliff.