Chapter 21

THE BAIT THAT LURED

I went along the tunnel in the direction of _le Vieil Ange_. It was broad day now, and the distance between the cataract and the open ground where the gold had been mined was sufficiently short for the whole length of the passage to be faintly visible.

It was a reach of deep twilight, brightening into sunlight at either end.

I picked my way carefully, peering into the numerous small caves and fissures in the wall on either hand. And I was about half-way through when I saw a shadow running in front of me and making no sound.

It was Duchaine. There could be no mistaking that tall, gaunt figure, just visible against the distant day.

He was running in his bare feet and, therefore, in complete silence, and he leaped across the rocky floor as though he wore moccasins.

I raced along the tunnel after him. But he seemed to be endowed with the speed of a deer, for he kept his distance easily, and I would never have caught him had he not stopped for an instant at the approach of the ledge.

There, just as he was poising himself to leap, I seized him by the arm.

"M. Duchaine! M. Duchaine! Stop!" I implored him. "Don't you know that I am your friend and only wish you well? I am your friend--your daughter Jacqueline's friend. I want to save you!"

He did not attempt violence, but gazed at me with hesitation and pathetic doubt.

"They want to catch me," he muttered. "They want to hang me. He has got a gallows ready for me to swing on, because I killed a soldier in the Fenian raids. But it wasn't I," he added with sudden cunning. "It was my brother, who looks like me. He died long ago. Let me go, _monsieur_. I am a poor, harmless old man. I shall not hurt anybody."

I took his hand in mine.

"M. Duchaine," I answered. "I wish you everything that is best in the world. I am your friend; I want to save you, not to capture you. Come back with me, _monsieur_, and I will take you away----"

The wild look came into his eyes again.

"No, no!" he screamed, trying to wrest himself from my grasp and measuring the distance across the ledge with his eye. "I will not go away. This is my home. I want to live here in peace. I want my wheel! Monsieur, give me my wheel. I have perfected a system. Listen!" He took me by the arm and spoke in that cunning madman's way: "I will make your fortune if you will let me go free. You shall have millions. We will go to Quebec together and play at the tables, as I did when I was a young man. My system cannot fail!"

"M. Duchaine," I pleaded, "won't you come back with me and let us talk it over? Jacqueline is with me----"

"No, no," he cried, laughing. "You can't catch me with such a trick as that. My little daughter has gone to New York to make our fortunes at M. Daly's gaming-house. She will be back soon, loaded down with gold."

I saw an opening here.

"She _has_ come back," I answered. "She is not fifty yards away."

"With gold?" he inquired, looking at me doubtfully.

"With gold," I answered, trying to allure his imagination as Leroux had done. "She has rich gold, red gold, such as you will love. You can take up the coins in your fingers and let the gold stream slip through them. Come with me, _monsieur_."

He hesitated and looked back into the darkness.

"I am afraid!" he exclaimed. "Listen, _monsieur_! There is a man hiding there--a man with a sword. He tried to capture me to-day. But I was too clever for him." He laughed with senile glee and rubbed his hands together. "I was too clever for him," he chuckled. "No, no, _monsieur_, I do not know who you are, but I am not going into that tunnel alone with you. Perhaps you have a gallows there."

"Do you not want the gold, _monsieur_?" I cried in exasperation. "Do you not want to see the gold that your daughter Jacqueline has brought back from New York for you?"

I grasped him by the arm and tried to lead him with me. My argument had moved him; cupidity had banished for the moment the dreadful picture of the gallows that he had conjured up. I thought I had won him.

But just as I started back into the tunnel, holding the arm of the old man, who lingered reluctantly and yet began to yield, a pebble leaped from the rocky platform and rebounded from the cliff. I cast a backward glance, and there upon the opposite side I saw Leroux standing.

There was something appalling in the man's presence there. I think it was his unchanging and implacable pursuit that for the moment daunted me. And this was symbolized in his fur coat, which he wore open in the front exactly as he had worn it that day when we met in the New York store, and as I had always seen him wear it.

He stood bareheaded, and his massive, lined, hard, weather-beaten face might have been a sneering gargoyle's, carved out of granite on some cathedral wall.

He stood half sheltered by the projecting ledge, and his aspect so fascinated me that I forgot my resolution to shoot to kill.

"_Bonjour_, M. Hewlett," he called across the chasm. "Don't be afraid of me any more than I am afraid of you. Just wait a moment. I want to talk business."

"I have no business to talk with you," I answered.

"But I did not say it was with you, _monsieur_," he answered in sneering tones. "It is with our friend, Duchaine. _Holà_, Duchaine!"

At the sound of Leroux's voice the old man straightened himself and began muttering and looking from the one to the other of us undecidedly.

In vain I tried to drag him within the tunnel. He shook himself free from me and sprang out on the icy ledge, and he poised himself there, turning his head from side to side as either of us spoke. And he effectively prevented me from shooting Leroux.

"Don't you know your best friends, Duchaine?" inquired Leroux; and the white beard was tipped toward the other side of the ledge.

"I don't know who my friends are, Simon," answered Duchaine, in his mild, melancholy voice. "What do you want?"

"Why, I want you, Charles, my old friend," replied Leroux in a voice expressive of surprize. "You old fool, do you want to die? If you do, go with that gentleman. He comes from Quebec on government business."

But I could plead better than that. I knew the symbol in his imagination.

"M. Duchaine! Come with me!" I cried. "He has a gallows ready for you back in that tunnel!"

It was a pitiful scheme, and yet for the life of me I could think of no other way to win him. And, as it happened, the word associated itself in the listener's mind as much with the speaker as with the man spoken of, for I saw Duchaine start violently and cling to the icy wall.

"No, no!" he cried; "I won't go with either of you. I am a poor old man. It was my brother who shot the soldier, and he is dead. Go away!"

He burst into senile tears and cowered there, surely the most pitiful spectacle that fate ever made of a man. The memories of the past thronged around him like avenging demons.

Suddenly I saw him turn his head and fix his eyes upon Leroux. He craned his neck forward; and then, very slowly, he began to walk toward his persecutor. I craned my neck.

Leroux was holding out--the roulette wheel!

"Come along, Charles, my friend," he cried. "Come, let us try our fortunes! Don't you want to stake some money upon your system against me?"

The old figure leaped forward over the ledge, and in a moment Leroux had grasped him and pulled him into the tunnel.

I whipped my revolver out and sent shot after shot across the chasm. The sound of the discharges echoed and re-echoed along the tunnel wall.

But the projecting ledge of rock effectively screened Leroux--and Duchaine as well, for in my passion I had been firing blindly, and but for that I should undoubtedly have killed Jacqueline's father.

The mocking laughter of Leroux came back to me in faint and far-away reply.

I saw the explanation of the man's presence now. He must have met Duchaine that morning as the old man was flying or wandering aimlessly along the tunnel. They had reached _le Vieil Ange_ together, and Leroux had probably had little difficulty in inducing the witless old man to take him back into the secret hiding-place.

It was lucky that we had not been there when Leroux discovered it. We must have crossed the ledge only a moment or two before them.

I hastened back to Jacqueline, and encountered her in the passage just where the light and darkness blended, standing with arms stretched out against the wall to steady herself; and in her eyes was that look which tells a man more surely than anything, I think, can, that a woman loves him.

"Oh, I thought you were dead!" she sobbed and fell into my arms.

I held her tightly to support her, and I led her back to the gold cave. In a few words I explained what had occurred.

"Now, Jacqueline, you must let me guide you," I said. "Don't you see that there is no chance for us unless we leave your father for the present where he is and make our own escape? We can reach Père Antoine's cabin soon after midday, and we can tell him your father is a prisoner here. He would not come with us, Jacqueline, even if he were here.

"And if he did, he might escape us on the way and wander back into the tunnels again. Leroux has no cause to harm him. Surely you see that, dear? He needs him--he needs his signature to the deed which is to give him your father's share of the seigniory. Just as he wants you, Jacqueline. And he shall never have you, dear. So I shall not let you go back, or he would get you in the end. Unless----"

I stopped. But she knew what I had thought.

"Unless I kill myself," she answered wildly. "That is the best way out, Paul! I am fated to bring nothing but evil upon every one with whom I come in contact. Ah, leave me, Paul, and let me meet my fate, and save yourself!"

Again I pleaded, and she did not respond. It was the safety of us two, and her father's life assured, against a miserable fate for her, and I knew not what for me, though I thought Leroux would give me little shrift once I was in his power again.

She was so silent that I thought I had convinced her. I urged her to her feet. But suddenly I heard a stealthy footfall close at hand, between the cave and the cataract.

I thought it was Charles Duchaine. I hoped it was Leroux. I placed my finger on Jacqueline's lips and crept stealthily to the passage, revolver in hand.

Then, in the gloom, I saw the villainous face of Jean Petitjean looking into mine, twelve paces away, and in his hand was a revolver, too.

We fired together. But the surprize spoiled his aim, for his bullet whistled past me. I think my shot struck him somewhere, for he uttered a yell and began running back along the tunnel as hard as he could.

I followed him, firing as fast as I could reload. But there was a slight bend in the passage here, and my bullets only struck the walls. So fortune helped the ruffian, for when I reached the light he was scrambling across the ledge, and before I could cover him he had succeeded in disappearing behind the projecting rock on the other side.

So Leroux had already sealed one exit--that by the Old Angel, where the road led into the main passage. God grant that he had not time to reach the exit by the mine!

If I made haste! If I made haste! But I would not argue the matter any further. I ran back at full speed. I reached the cave.

"Jacqueline! Come, come!" I called.

She did not answer.

I ran forward, peering round me in the obscurity. I saw her near the earth-sacks, lying upon her side. Her eyes were closed, her face as white as a dead woman's.

White--but her dress was blood-soaked, and there was blood on the sacks and on the stony floor. It oozed from her side, and her hand was cold as the rocks, and there was no flutter at her wrist.

The bullet from Jean Petitjean's revolver that missed me must have penetrated her body.

She lived, for her breast stirred, though so faintly that it seemed as though all that remained of life were concentrated in the faint-throbbing heart-beats.

I raised her in my arms and placed a sack beneath her head, making a resting-place for her with my fur coat. Then with my knife I cut away her dress over the wound.

There was a bullet-hole beneath her breast, stained with dark blood. I ran down to the rivulet, risking an ambuscade, brought back cold water, and washed it, and stanched the flow as best I could, making a bandage and placing it above the wound.

It was a poor effort at first aid, by one who had never seen a bullet-wound before, and I was distracted with misery and grief, and yet I remember how steady my hands were and with what precision and care I performed my task.

I have a dim remembrance of losing my self-control when this was done, and clasping her in my arms and pressing my lips to her cold cheek and begging her to live and praying wildly that she should not die. Then I raised her in my arms and was staggering across the cave toward the tunnel which led to the rocking stone.