The Pirate Woman Part 20

He carried her around to the great rock, and through the pa.s.sage into the great chamber, bursting in upon a situation of growing intensity.

Dolores sat on a corner of the table, with all her seductive lures in her beautiful face, smiling invitingly at Rupert Venner. Craik Tomlin glared at both, yet his gaze seemed hard to restrain from wandering around the gorgeous chamber, whose wealth he saw now for the first time.

Venner, too, had been seized by the jewel-hunger, although neither he, nor Tomlin, guessed at the immensely greater wealth that had been revealed to Pea.r.s.e. As for Pea.r.s.e, he sat glowering in his chair, nervous and smoldering; ready at a hint to draw steel without caring what the object. He simply saw rivalry where fifteen minutes before he had thought his own course clear.

Milo appeared to them; carrying his sobbing burden, and the interruption brought a blaze of fury to Dolores's face. She went pale, and her hands clenched and opened nervously.

"Well, slave?" she cried, and Milo started. Never had she used that tone to him.

"Sultana, I thought thou wert alone," he replied, haltingly. "I have brought Pascherette to thee for forgiveness."

"I forgive? Pish! What care I for thy chit? Take her where ye will, and trouble me not with such trash. Out, now! Let me not see her face again, and I care not what ye do with her. But haste. I have work for thee and a score of slaves. Bring them here quickly!"

Silently Milo bore Pascherette to the small room beyond the great chamber, which had been her resting-place while not in attendance on Dolores. And there, still shaking his head to her plea, though with deepening trouble in his eyes, he left her, crying herself into a fitful slumber.

Then with slaves dragged from the corners where they had cowered during the fight, he entered the great chamber, and at Dolores's command set them to carrying out the closed treasure-chests that stood in their old places around the walls.

And the sight of the great chests actually going out brought fiery jealousy back to the eyes of the three yachtsmen. Now Dolores half-closed her own inscrutable eyes, and watched them, catlike, cunning. Pea.r.s.e sprang from the great chair and began pacing the floor in a heat. Venner alone seemed to retain any vestige of control over his feelings; and he rapidly lost his color and began to peer about him.

One chest went out, and the cries of the slaves could be heard as they lowered it over the cliff. They returned for another, and now Dolores leaped to her feet and followed them, flinging over her shoulder a smile of invitation. Pea.r.s.e answered instantly; the others paused. Then she laughed like a siren and held out her hands to the hesitant ones, and said softly and pleasantly:

"Have no fears, timid ones. Thy minds are indeed hard to fathom. I but want to show thee how I am repaying thee for thy sufferings here. Come."

They followed her, and together they entered the rocky tunnel. At the end of it the yellow sunlight blazed like a fire, in the circular aperture was framed a picture of wonderful beauty. The blue sky, flecked with fleecy cloudlets, filled the upper half of the circle; then the sparkling sea of deeper blue lifted its dazzling whitecaps to the kiss of the trades and formed a gem-like background for the brazen sands, the glowing green-and-purple of the Point, and the dainty ivory-and-gold of the white schooner.

It was all mellowed and diminished as seen through a gla.s.s at great distance; and on the sh.o.r.e the men toiling to load a great treasure-chest into a long-boat looked like tiny manikins posed about a delicate model of marine life. The second chest yet stood on the cliff-edge, slaves about it lashing double slings and tackles that led from a boulder for lowering it down.

Dolores stepped back, permitting the three men to take in the view without restriction. And she watched them again, her face enigmatic if they glanced at her, breaking into an expression of nearing triumph when they looked away, and left her free to scrutinize them. She saw John Pea.r.s.e step a pace behind the others, and his fingers clutched absently at his rapier-hilt while the veins on his neck stood out and throbbed like live things.

"One more chest, perhaps two, and I shall see who will be my man!" she whispered to herself.

Then she left them without a word, and returned to the great chamber, where she s.n.a.t.c.hed up an immense rope of pearls and resumed her seat on the edge of the table. There she sat, giving them no glance, when the three men came back, hastily, uneasily, one behind the other, with Tomlin bringing up the rear, scowling at Venner's back malevolently.

Idly now Dolores rolled her pearls on the table, and one by one she crushed them with her dagger-hilt--crushed in one moment the wealth of many a petty princeling, and still crushed gem after gem without so much as a flicker of interest on her cool face. The three men glared at her, and at each other, and the stress they were under could be felt like an impending electric storm. Tomlin's teeth gritted together harshly, his lips were dripping saliva, and he could stand it no longer. He stepped suddenly before Dolores, seized her hands, and cried:

"Woman, you are mad! Do you know what those things are? They are pearls, woman, pearls! Stop this crazy destruction, and in G.o.d's name let us go before you madden us."

Dolores turned her cool gaze upon him, drew her hand away easily yet without apparent effort, and crushed another pearl between her gleaming teeth.

"Pearls?" she repeated, tossing away the shattered gem. "Pearls, yes, friend. What of it? Do ye value these trifles, then? Pish! I have such things as these, aye, one for every hair on thy hot head. But let ye go--ha! That is in thy hands, my friend, thine and thy companions."

"Yes, we know your price!" gasped Venner hoa.r.s.ely, staring full into her eyes. "But what is to prevent us now, when we have you alone, and that great giant is away, from binding you fast and sailing away with the treasure you have already put in my vessel?"

"What can prevent?" she echoed, simulating surprise that such a question should occur to any one. "Nothing shall prevent, my friend, if any of ye think to try it. Have I not said my treasure is for the man who wins it.

Am I not waiting for the man able to take it, that I may go with him, too? Here--" She suddenly flung down the pearls at Tomlin's feet, glided close to Venner, and thrust her red lips up to him, her violet eyes like br.i.m.m.i.n.g pools behind her drooping lashes. "Here, tie me, my Rupert. Here are my hands; there my feet. Bind me well, and go if thou canst. What, wilt thou not? There, I knew thee better than thou knowest thyself."

She stepped back with a low laugh, and her arm brushed his cheek, sending the hot blood surging to his temples. John Pea.r.s.e crouched toward Venner, as if waiting for him to lay a finger on Dolores at his peril. She smiled at all three, and stepped over to the side of the chamber, where she carelessly pointed out sacred vessels and altar furnishings, gems of art and jewel-crusted lamps.

"Here, also, is a reason why ye will not go, my friends. Your eyes, accustomed to these things in the great world outside, dare not ignore their worth. And I tell ye that all the treasure now going to the vessel could not purchase the thousandth part of my real treasure, which I will not show, until I know my man." She glanced at Pea.r.s.e as she spoke, and saw rising greed in his eyes. He had seen the real treasure; he was ripe for her hand. Milo and his slaves returned for another chest, and Dolores waited until they had gone; then she glided swiftly toward the pa.s.sage, and turned at the door.

"I shall return in fifteen minutes, gentlemen," she said. "Then my man must be ready, or I will drop the great rock at the entrance, and leave ye all three caged here until ye die. For go I will, mated or mateless, with all my treasure, ere the sun sinks into the western sea." And as she left them she flashed a look of appeal at John Pea.r.s.e.

CHAPTER XXI.

THE SLUMBERING SAVAGE.

Pea.r.s.e followed her with his eyes until she vanished into the pa.s.sage; then with muttering lips and harshly working features he strode down the chamber to the great tapestry behind which lay the powder store. The suspicion had come to him that Dolores was fooling them all regarding her real treasure; for he believed she had shown him everything, and if those heavy chests contained but a t.i.the of the whole, life was certain that the gems around the walls were not what she meant when she said she had still a thousand times greater riches than the chests contained.

He tore aside the tapestry, and tried to see through the gloom of the cavern. His eyes could not pierce the blackness, and he looked around for a light, while Venner and Tomlin walked toward him with sudden interest in their faces. Over the tall Hele clock a lantern hung; a gaudy thing of beaten gold, in which an oil wick burned, gleaming out in multicolored light through openings glazed with turquoise and sapphire, ruby, and emerald. He took this down, and impatiently tore away the side of it to secure a stronger light. Again he went to the powder store, and now Venner and Tomlin were at his back, peering over his shoulder or under his arms in curiosity as to his quest.

And, sensing their presence, he swung around upon them savagely, m.u.f.fling the cry that answered the message of his eyes. Flinging the lantern down, he trampled it out, and with snarling teeth he faced them, his rapier flickering from the sheath like a dart of lightning.

"Back!" he barked, and advanced one foot, falling into a guard. "This is no concern of yours, Venner, nor yours, Tomlin. Back, I say!"

Tomlin stared into his furious face and laughed greedily. His keen eyes had seen a vague, shadowy something in the cavern, that filled him with the same pa.s.sion which consumed Pea.r.s.e.

"So you are the lucky one, eh, Pea.r.s.e?" he chuckled, and his hand went to his own rapier. He stepped back a pace, and, never taking his eyes from Pea.r.s.e, cried: "Venner, it's you and me against the devil and Pea.r.s.e! A pretty plot to fool us, indeed; but Pea.r.s.e was too eager. Peep into that hole, man, and see!"

Venner glared from one to the other, not yet inflamed as they were. But what he saw in their faces convinced him that great stakes were up to be played for, and he edged forward bent upon seeing for himself.

"Back!" screamed Pea.r.s.e, presenting his rapier at Venner's breast.

Venner persisted, and the steel p.r.i.c.ked him. Then, as Tomlin's weapon rasped out, Venner's blood leaped to fighting-heat with his slight wound, and in the next instant the three-sided duel was hotly in progress.

Three-sided it became after the first exchanges. For Pea.r.s.e, the most skilled in fence, applied himself to Venner as his most dangerous foe, and with the cunning of the serpent Craik Tomlin saw and seized his own opportunity. Let Pea.r.s.e and Venner kill each other, or let that end be accomplished with his outside help, and there was the solution that Dolores had demanded them to work out; one of them left, to be master of the wealth of Croesus; to be the mate of a magnificent creature, who could be G.o.ddess or she-devil at will.

With a satanic chuckle Tomlin drew back, leaving his friends to fight themselves weary, his own rapier ever presented toward them, urging them on with lashing tongue. And Venner flashed a look at him as Caesar did at Brutus, and suffered for his lapse in vigilance. For with the pounce of a leopard Pea.r.s.e was upon him, and his rapier grated over Venner's guard and darted straight at his throat. But Venner's time had not come yet; Tomlin flashed his own weapon in and parried the stroke for him, backing away again with a murderous snarl.

"Not yet, my friends!" he cried. "You're too strong yet, Pea.r.s.e. At him, Venner; let me see you draw blood as he has, that I may see my own way clearer."

From the other end of the great chamber Dolores watched the conflict from the concealment of the velvet hangings over the door; and her hands were clasped in ecstasy, her lips parted to the swift breathing that agitated her breast; in her blazing eyes her wicked soul lurked, sending out its evil aura to envelop the combatants and instil deeper hatred into them.

The fight raged back and forth around the powder store; once a sudden onslaught by Pea.r.s.e forced Venner back to the great chair; Tomlin's swift rush to keep close brought all three into a tumbled crash at the dais, and the chair was overturned in a heap of flying draperies that entangled their feet. And while Pea.r.s.e and Venner struggled vainly to maintain their footing, Tomlin began to accomplish his own dire ends.

Crouching, with his dark face full of evil pa.s.sions, he drove his point first at one, then at the other, stabbing through the involved silk and skins.

In his furious haste to complete his murderous work, he sprang forward carelessly, his foot became entangled, and he pitched face downward upon his victims. Now Pea.r.s.e seized the opening; but when he arose, stumblingly, there was a different expression on his face, a horror-stricken realization of Tomlin's treachery. Venner lay, still unable to disentangle himself, but slightly hurt, and he, too, regarded Tomlin with a look of sorrow and reawakening sanity.

"Up, murderer, and fight!" rasped Pea.r.s.e, stepping astride Venner and glaring down at Tomlin. "Venner, draw aside. Let me punish this scoundrel we have called friend; then meet me if you wish."

Tomlin looked up with a snarl of baffled rage, expecting swift reprisal for his treacherous attempt. Gone was the last vestige of civilization from his face; greed of gold, jewel-hunger, blood-l.u.s.t, all played about his reddened eyes and cruel, down-drawn mouth. The primitive came through the veneer of culture and showed him the man he really was. And evil though his spirit had proved, in this final test his courage showed up like that of the tiger. He leaned on one elbow, watching Pea.r.s.e like a cat, then slowly knelt and stood, keeping his point down. With the b.e.s.t.i.a.l cunning that had overwhelmed him, he circled away from the trappings and draperies of the chair that had brought him down, and responded to Pea.r.s.e's chivalrous waiting with a sneer.

"You had better have made sure while you had the chance, Pea.r.s.e," he grinned, showing his teeth wolfishly. "Venner can wait. There is no treasure for three; Dolores is mine! Guard!"

With the word Tomlin made a savage attack without waiting for Pea.r.s.e to fall into guard. And Dolores came from her concealment, advanced half-way down the chamber, and watched with a new intensity that was not apparent while Venner was in the fight.

Pea.r.s.e avoided his opponent's thrust at the expense of a pierced left hand, which caught the other's point a hand-breadth from his breast.

Then the duel dropped to equality. Swift and silent they fought, silent save for the rasp and screech of steel on steel, their feet padding noiselessly on the deep-piled carpet. Venner drew aside and watched, his eyes losing their hard glare, and some of his old expression returned to his face. It was as if his resurging emotions were bringing back to him the shame and remorse of a gentleman inveigled into performing a despicable action. He, too, saw Dolores approaching; saw the tensity of her expression; sensed some of the tremendous hopes that actuated her, now that she saw the rapid culmination of all her plots and seductions.