_The Miracle_
No great intelligence was needed to understand the meaning of it.
Fernand, having trapped his game, was now about to kill it. He could
suffocate the two with smoke, blown into the tunnel, and make them rush
blindly out. The moment they appeared, dazed and uncertain, the
revolvers of half a dozen gunmen would be emptied into them.
"It's like taking a trap full of rats," said Ronicky bitterly, "and
shaking them into a pail of water. Let's go back and see what we can."
They had only to turn the corner of the tunnel to be sure. Fernand had
had the door of the tunnel slid noiselessly open, then, into the tunnel
itself, smoking, slowly burning, pungent pieces of pine wood had been
thrown, having been first soaked in oil, perhaps. The tunnel was rapidly
filling with smoke, and through the white drifts of it they looked into
the lighted cellar beyond. They would run out at last, gasping for
breath and blinded by the smoke, to be shot down in a perfect light. So
much was clear.
"Now back to the wall and try to find that door," said Ronicky.
Jerry had already turned. In a moment they were back and tearing with
their fingers at the sham wall, kicking loose fragments with their feet.
All the time, while they cleared a larger and larger space, they
searched feverishly with the electric torch for some sign of a knob
which would indicate a door, or some button or spring which might be
used to open it. But there was nothing, and in the meantime the smoke
was drifting back, in more and more unendurable clouds.
"I can't stand much more," declared Jerry at length.
"Keep low. The best air is there," answered Ronicky.
A voice called from the mouth of the tunnel, and they could recognize
the smooth tongue of Frederic Fernand. "Doone, I think I have you now.
But trust yourselves to me, and all may still be well with you. Throw
out your weapons, and then walk out yourselves, with your arms above
your heads, and you may have a second chance. I don't promise--I simply
offer you a hope in the place of no hope at all. Is that a good
bargain?"
"I'll see you hung first," answered Ronicky and turned again to his work
at the wall.
But it seemed a quite hopeless task. The surface of the steel was still
covered, after they had cleared it as much as they could, with a thin,
clinging coat of plaster which might well conceal the button or device
for opening the door. Every moment the task became infinitely harder.
Finally Jerry, his lungs nearly empty of oxygen, cast himself down on
the floor and gasped. A horrible gagging sound betrayed his efforts for
breath.
Ronicky knelt beside him. His own lungs were burning, and his head was
thick and dizzy. "One more try, then we'll turn and rush them and die
fighting, Jerry."
The other nodded and started to his feet. Together they made that last
effort, fumbling with their hands across the rough surface, and
suddenly--had they touched the spring, indeed?--a section of the surface
before them swayed slowly in. Ronicky caught the half-senseless body of
Jerry Smith and thrust him inside. He himself staggered after, and
before him stood Ruth Tolliver!
While he lay panting on the floor, she closed the door through which
they had come and then stood and silently watched them. Presently Smith
sat up, and Ronicky Doone staggered to his feet, his head clearing
rapidly.
He found himself in a small room, not more than eight feet square, with
a ceiling so low that he could barely stand erect. As for the
furnishings and the arrangement, it was more like the inside of a safe
than anything else. There were, to be sure, three little stools, but
nothing else that one would expect to find in an apartment. For the rest
there was nothing but a series of steel drawers and strong chests,
lining the walls of the room and leaving in the center very little room
in which one might move about.
He had only a moment to see all of this. Ruth Tolliver, hooded in an
evening cloak, but with the light gleaming in her coppery hair, was
shaking him by the arm and leaning a white face close to him.
"Hurry!" she was saying. "There isn't a minute to lose. You must start
now, at once. They will find out--they will guess--and then--"
"John Mark?" he asked.
"Yes," she exclaimed, realizing that she had said too much, and she
pressed her hand over her mouth, looking at Ronicky Doone in a sort of
horror.
Jerry Smith had come to his feet at last, but he remained in the
background, staring with a befuddled mind at the lovely vision of the
girl. Fear and excitement and pleasure had transformed her face, but she
seemed trembling in an agony of desire to be gone. She seemed invincibly
drawn to remain there longer still. Ronicky Doone stared at her, with a
strange blending of pity and admiration. He knew that the danger was not
over by any means, but he began to forget that.
"This way!" called the girl and led toward an opposite door, very low in
the wall.
"Lady," said Ronicky gently, "will you hold on one minute? They won't
start to go through the smoke for a while. They'll think they've choked
us, when we don't come out on the rush, shooting. But they'll wait quite
a time to make sure. They don't like my style so well that they'll hurry
me." He smiled sourly at the thought. "And we got time to learn a lot of
things that we'll never find out, unless we know right now, pronto!"
He stepped before the girl, as he spoke. "How come you knew we were in
there? How come you to get down here? How come you to risk everything
you got to let us out through the treasure room of Mark's gang?"
He had guessed as shrewdly as he could, and he saw, by her immediate
wincing, that the shot had told.
"You strange, mad, wild Westerner!" she exclaimed. "Do you mean to tell
me you want to stay here and talk? Even if you have a moment to spare
you must use it. If you knew the men with whom you are dealing you would
never dream of--"
In her pause he said, smiling: "Lady, it's tolerable clear that you
don't know me. But the way I figure it is this: a gent may die any time,
but, when he finds a minute for good living, he'd better make the most
of it."
He knew by her eyes that she half guessed his meaning, but she wished to
be certain. "What do you intend by that?" she asked.
"It's tolerable simple," said Ronicky. "I've seen square things done in
my life, but I've never yet seen a girl throw up all she had to do a
good turn for a gent she's seen only once. You follow me, lady? I pretty
near guess the trouble you're running into."
"You guess what?" she asked.
"I guess that you're one of John Mark's best cards. You're his chief
gambler, lady, and he uses you on the big game."
She had drawn back, one hand pressed against her breast, her mouth tight
with the pain. "You have guessed all that about me?" she asked faintly.
"That means you despise me!"
"What folks do don't matter so much," said Ronicky. "It's the reasons
they have for doing a thing that matters, I figure, and the way they do
it. I dunno how John Mark hypnotized you and made a tool out of you, but
I do know that you ain't changed by what you've done."
Ronicky Doone stepped to her quickly and took both her hands. He was
not, ordinarily, particularly forward with girls. Now he acted as
gracefully as if he had been the father of Ruth Tolliver. "Lady," he
said, "you've saved two lives tonight. That's a tolerable lot to have
piled up to anybody's credit. Besides, inside you're snow-white. We've
got to go, but I'm coming back. Will you let me come back?"
"Never, never!" declared Ruth Tolliver. "You must never see me--you must
never see Caroline Smith again. Any step you take in that direction is
under peril of your life. Leave New York, Ronicky Doone. Leave it as
quickly as you may, and never come back. Only pray that his arm isn't
long enough to follow you."
"Leave Caroline?" he asked. "I'll tell you what you're going to do,
Ruth. When you get back home you're going to tell Caroline that Jerry,
here, has seen the light about Mark, and that he has money enough to pay
back what he owes."
"But I haven't," broke in Jerry.
"I have it," said Ronicky, "and that's the same thing."
"I'll take no charity," declared Jerry Smith.
"You'll do what I tell you," said Ronicky Doone. "You been bothering
enough, son. Go tell Caroline what I've said," he went on to the girl.
"Let her know that they's no chain on anybody, and, if she wants to find
Bill Gregg, all she's got to do is go across the street. You
understand?"
"But, even if I were to tell her, how could she go, Ronicky Doone, when
she's watched?"
"If she can't make a start and get to a man that loves her and is
waiting for her, right across the street, she ain't worth worrying
about," said Ronicky sternly. "Do we go this way?"
She hurried before them. "You've waited too long--you've waited too
long!" she kept whispering in her terror, as she led them through the
door, paused to turn out the light behind her, and then conducted them
down a passage like that on the other side of the treasure chamber.
It was all deadly black and deadly silent, but the rustling of the
girl's dress, as she hurried before them, was their guide. And always
her whisper came back: "Hurry! Hurry! I fear it is too late!"
Suddenly they were climbing up a narrow flight of steps. They stood
under the starlight in a back yard, with houses about them on all sides.
"Go down that alley, and you will be on the street," said the girl.
"Down that alley, and then hurry--run--find the first taxi. Will you do
that?"
"We'll sure go, and we'll wait for Caroline Smith--and you, too!"
"Don't talk madness! Why will you stay? You risk everything for
yourselves and for me!"
Jerry Smith was already tugging at Ronicky's arm to draw him away, but
the Westerner was stubbornly pressing back to the girl. He had her hand
and would not leave it.
"If you don't show up, lady," he said, "I'll come to find you. You
hear?"
"No, no!"
"I swear!"
"Bless you, but never venture near again. But, oh, Ronicky Doone, I wish
ten other men in the whole world could be half so generous and wild as
you!" Suddenly her hand was slipped from his, and she was gone into the
shadows.
Down the alley went Jerry Smith, but he returned in an agony of dread to
find that Ronicky Doone was still running here and there, in a blind
confusion, probing the shadowy corners of the yard in search of the
girl.
"Come off, you wild man," said Jerry. "They'll be on our heels any
minute--they may be waiting for us now, down the alley--come off, idiot,
quick!"
"If I thought they was a chance of finding her I'd stay," declared
Ronicky, shaking his head bitterly. "Whether you and me live, don't
count beside a girl like that. Getting soot on one tip of her finger
might mean more'n whether you or me die."
"Maybe, maybe," said the other, "but answer that tomorrow; right now,
let's start to make sure of ourselves, and we can come back to find her
later."
Ronicky Doone, submitting partly to the force and partly to the
persuasion of his friend, turned reluctantly and followed him down the
alley.