IN DEADLY PERIL.
Slowly and carefully Nita went down the dark, narrow, dusty steps to the
rickety door at the foot, expecting confidently that it would lead her
straight out-doors, most probably into the kitchen-garden. She found the
door slightly ajar, pushed it quickly open, and found herself, without
warning or premonition, in a small, dingy, cobwebby room, full of gloomy
shadows, and dimly lighted by a flaring dip, in an old battered tin
candlestick.
The little closetlike chamber, barely eight feet wide, was furnished
with a small table, and an arm-chair, over which was thrown a coarse,
dark-gray blanket. Against the walls were ranged a large number of
small, iron-bound chests, similar to the one up-stairs in Nita's closet.
The lids of several were open, and the wondering girl saw that they were
filled to the brim with money, that gleamed bright and yellow in the
flaring, uncertain light of the solitary candle.
But not even all this hoarded gold could have surprised Nita as did the
central figure of it all--the old man kneeling with his back to her over
one of the open chests, and running his shriveled fingers through the
bright coins, while his lips worked nervously, emitting chuckling and
guttural noises of ghoulish delight.
Nita's instant alarm struck her dumb. She was for the moment incapable
of speech or motion. She could only stare in an appalled silence. She
had recognized in the crouching old man gloating over his treasure her
miser-husband, Charles Farnham, whom she had supposed to be far away
from this place, according to the terms of the marriage-contract.
Even while she gazed there crept over her a sensation of deadly fear and
dread, that seemed to freeze the very blood in her veins. She thought in
wild alarm:
"I have blundered upon this secret, and the accident may cost me my
life. Heaven help me to escape before he discovers me!"
Absorbed in his fascinating employment, the miser had not noticed her
entrance. He continued to play with the gold like a child, pouring it
from one trembling hand to the other, muttering and chuckling in a
strange ecstasy.
Nita summoned all her will-power to break the thrall of terror that
seemed to hold her limbs immovable. Suddenly, the power of motion
returned. She turned softly, made two catlike steps, and was on the
stairs on the other side of the door, safe--ah, what was that grating
sound?
In drawing the door softly to behind her the rusty hinge had creaked
harshly! Nita's heart gave a bound of deadly fear, she gasped for
breath, and sprang wildly forward.
If only she could reach the corridor above with its intricate windings,
she could elude pursuit in some dark corner.
But from the room she had left came a sound between a howl and a groan,
and the old man bounded to the stairs with such wondrous agility that
his outstretched hand caught the long skirts of the escaping girl, and
dragged her ruthlessly backward.
Clutching her fiercely, in spite of her cries and struggles for liberty,
and bearing her forward into the light, he gazed eagerly into her face.
A bitter oath escaped his lips as he beheld in his struggling captive
the face of his beautiful, unloving bride.
To Nita, with her nerves yet unstrung by sickness and excitement, the
sight of the old miser's face, distorted by rage and surprise, was
absolutely terrifying.
She trembled like a leaf in his rude grasp, and moans of terror came
from her blanched lips.
"Spy!" he hissed angrily, and in the fierce malevolent gleam of his
snakelike eyes she read a wild temptation to grasp her fair white throat
in his strong hands and throttle her to death.
"Spy! You have followed me here!" the old man hissed again savagely.
He shook her rudely until the breath had almost left her body, then
flung her upon one of the chests, and, locking the little door, dropped
the key into his pocket. She was at the mercy of this fiendish old man
who had come into her life so strangely, and at so dark an hour.
"Release me, oh, release me!" she gasped faintly, pleadingly, but he
looked at her with pitiless eyes, and answered:
"Once before a woman, filled with the greed for gold, followed me here
to find out the secret of my hidden treasures. Well--her friends are
searching for her yet, as perchance yours will be, too, for many a
year."
"You murdered her!" gasped Nita, with a creeping thrill of utter horror.
"No," he replied, and after a moment's pause continued with a hideous
leer:
"I simply left her locked in this room and went away, leaving her alone
with the treasure she coveted. It was a long, long time before I came
back, and then--I found her still here."
"Still here!" the startled captive repeated. He saw the shudder that
crept over her frame, and laughed mockingly.
"Still here--waiting for me still," he sneered. "Always here, waiting
for me when I come. Look!"
Turning from her, he threw aside the dark blanket that had draped the
chair by the table. Nita looked and shrieked aloud.
The coarse blanket had concealed the fleshless skeleton of a human being
sitting at ease in the chair, with the bony digits of one hand resting
on the table. About the neck was clasped a golden chain with a shining
pendant, while on one finger gleamed a magnificent emerald ring, ghastly
mockery of adornment.
Nita's overstrained nerves gave way at the startling sight. She crouched
upon the chest of gold with her hands before her eyes, while appalling
shrieks burst from her lips.
She doubted not the same awful fate would be her own, despite the fact
that she was bound to Charles Farnham by the most solemn tie.
At her shrieks he turned upon her with the fierce command:
"Silence! Do not think that your cries will bring assistance to this
vault! This wing of Gray Gables is utterly uninhabited and isolated from
the newer part of the house. You are wholly in my power and at my mercy
to punish as I will."
From his excited, remorseless face she doubted not what that punishment
would be--isolation and starvation in the miser's hidden treasure-vault
in company with that awful thing yonder, the ghastly, grinning,
jewel-bedecked skeleton.
There came a swift thought of Dorian Mountcastle. She should never see
him again. Would he miss the girl into whose eyes he had gazed with such
passion? Would the mystery of her strange fate sadden his life? She
cried out, rebelliously:
"Punish at your will! Yet I have done nothing--nothing!" and, falling on
her knees, she poured out impetuously the story of the mistake in
opening the door that had brought her to this terrible strait.
"Through no fault of mine," she sobbed wildly. "Yet--yet--I am to suffer
death for this unconscious wrong. Ah, sir, how can you be so cruel? Why,
then, did you save me from the river for this more terrible fate?"
He stood silent, gazing at the beautiful, convulsed face. Yes, it was
scarce a week since he had turned her aside from a self-sought death.
He remembered her strange, almost stoical calm, in such contrast with
her wild agitation now. Life had grown sweeter, dearer now since that
day in Central Park, when, starving and friendless, she had derided him
with the scorn of a hopeless and reckless despair.
"Let me go free, only give me my liberty, and the secret I have
unwillingly discovered shall never pass my lips!" she cried frantically.
"Do you remember that day in the park when you pretended that you loved
me? Then, how can you be so cruel?"
The old miser's face changed suddenly from rage and malevolence to a
leering softness more hateful still to her shrinking eyes. He came
closer, and she started back in disgust.