SHE STARED DEATH IN THE FACE.
The sound of a muffled shriek had, indeed, come faintly to Laurie’s
ears from the direction of Lelia’s room, chilling the blood in his
veins with fear and horror.
He ran frantically toward her door, followed fast by the portly doctor
and the sinewy Crawford, who had the strength of a prize-fighter in his
black fists.
Again a muffled shriek, then silence, as they tried to turn the handle
of the unyielding door.
“We must burst it in!” breathed Laurie tensely, with the cold dew of
excitement beading his high white brow.
All together, they hurled their strong bodies forward with determined
will.
The lock could not stand their furious onslaught.
It yielded, the screws parted, the door crashed inward with such
suddenness that all three tumbled in a heap upon the floor, gasping as
if the breath had been knocked out of them.
But like a flash they sprang up again, and not a minute too soon.
For the sight that met their eyes was maddening to their manly hearts.
The masked burglars had succeeded but too easily in their designs.
Lelia’s maid having furnished them a clever description of the house,
they found it, as she had told them, very carelessly guarded indeed,
and had effected an easy entrance through an unbolted window.
The inmates of The Crags had always dwelt in careless security, having
never been harassed by burglars.
The Willoughbys, when not entertaining guests, always kept their silver
plate at the bank in the nearest town, and their money the same. Miss
Willoughby always felt that these facts were too generally known for
her to entertain fears of robbery.
She might have rested still in security, but that Lelia’s handsome
diamonds had been coveted for some time by a band of thieves in the
city of Charleston, where she lived.
Finding them too closely guarded there, they had followed, by her
maid’s advice, into the country.
And the fates had smiled on them in the time chosen for the burglary.
The men were all gone to seek for the missing girl, and while Lelia
sang in the music-room, and her aunt listened in the hall, the two men
below, in the dining-room, were loading up a coarse sack with as much
gold and silver plate as they thought they could conveniently get away
with in safety.
This job completed, they dropped the sack out of the window, down
into some thick shrubberies, to be recovered after they had possessed
themselves of the case of jewels. They chuckled over the ease of their
undertaking, and wasted some moments that were more precious to them
than they knew in taking a cold lunch in the pantry.
Their impromptu feast over, they cautiously ascended the stairs, the
echo of their footfalls drowned by the soft, rich carpets, as well as
by the sound of Lelia’s singing.
“This is a regular cinch, Jack,” cried Larkin, as they penetrated the
unlocked door of the guest-chamber, where obsequious servants had
already lighted the lamps for Miss Ritchie’s retiring.
“What mystifies me is what has become o’ all the menfolk that belong
here. Don’t seem to be no one in the house but them two wemmen. I swan,
I believe that them men we passed in the light wagon, ’way down the
road, must have come from here, don’t you think so?” whispered Jack, as
they cautiously explored the adjoining dressing-room, where the maid
had said the trunks would be stored.
Larkin agreed with him, and declared that they were in great luck, and
must hurry up and get the jewels before Miss Ritchie came up to retire.
They proceeded to pick locks and go through the trunks, seeking the
coveted case of jewels.
And in their careless sense of security, emboldened by their success in
the dining-room, they forgot to lock the door of the outside apartment
while they labored with a will overturning trunks of dainty clothing,
until the floor was a litter of silk and lace and lingerie.
The very last trunk was reached before the treasure was found.
“Now let us be gone!” one muttered jubilantly; but, alas! at that very
moment a disconcerting interruption occurred.
Lelia, in a fury at her lover and her aunt, bounced angrily into her
room, banging and locking the door against all intruders.
Dismayed and angered by the intrusion, the burglars, with stifled
oaths, hid themselves behind a tall wardrobe, swearing to each other in
muffled oaths that they would like to wring her pretty neck.
“Two minutes more and we should have been safely outside! Hang the
luck! We shall have to stay mewed up here in this hole till she gets to
bed and to sleep, so’s we can steal out!”
“And if she comes in here we shall not dare breathe, for she would be
sure to hear us, curse the luck!”
They resigned themselves to waiting, believing that, as the hour was
late, she could not possibly remain up but a few minutes. Her pretty
eyes would soon be closed in sleep.
But this was where they reckoned without their host.
Instead of retiring, Lelia raged up and down her room like the cyclone
to which Miss Cyrilla had likened her, raving against her lover and
Gipsy, and calling down all sorts of evil on the latter’s head.
“She’s a she-devil! Listen, how she hates everybody! Will she never
have done raging? It’s half an hour now the vixen has been tearing
up and down, and she ain’t tired out yet! If she keeps it up till
daylight, where are we, I want to know? I propose that we rush in
suddint on her, and wring her neck before she can holler; what say?”
whispered Jack.
“Done!” And grasping the precious case, they bolted through the open
door into the room.
Lelia, in her angry walk, had just turned, and she faced them with
awful horror in her dilated blue eyes.
She saw the jewel-case in one man’s arms, she saw the brutal menace in
their faces--stared death, as it were, in the face, all in one horrible
moment.
A wild and piercing shriek rose to her blanched lips, but it was
stifled in its birth by rough and brutal hands about the throat.
Again a stifled groan, but it was strangled half-born in her throat by
that vicious clutch, and only the faintest echo reached Laurie’s ears.
But that was enough, coupled with Gipsy’s warnings.
Then opportunely the doctor and Crawford appeared on the scene, and
responded to the call for assistance.
The door was crashed in, and they entered on the scene where the
helpless Lelia was struggling in the grasp of the ruffian bent on
murder.
Startled, surprised, taken at a disadvantage by superior numbers, the
pair of villains made a bold fight for liberty, but the contest was
short, and ended in their utter discomfiture. In ten minutes Laurie and
Crawford were each sitting down on their man, while the doctor hustled
around for ropes to tie them.