_The Golden God Speaks_
For a while the man on the floor in his weakness rambled on as in a
delirium.
"Ah, Dios!" he muttered. "There's a knife in every hand." Then
followed an incoherent succession of phrases, but out of them the two
distinguished this, "Millions upon millions in jewels and gold." Then,
"But the God is silent. His lips are sealed by the blood of the
twenty."
After this the thick tongue stumbled over some word like "Guadiva,"
and a little later he seemed in his troubled dreams to be struggling
up a rugged height, for he complained of the stones which fretted his
feet. Wilson managed to pour a spoonful of brandy down his throat and
to rebandage the wound which had begun to bleed again. It was clear
the man was suffering from great weakness due to loss of blood, but as
yet his condition was not such as to warrant Wilson in summoning a
surgeon on his own responsibility. Besides, to do so would be
seriously to compromise himself and the girl. It might be difficult
for them to explain their presence there to an outsider. Should the
man by any chance die, their situation would be such that their only
safety would lie in flight. To the law they were already fugitives and
consequently to be suspected of anything from petty larceny to
murder.
To have forced himself to the safe with all the pain which walking
caused him, the wounded man must have been impelled by some strong and
unusual motive. It couldn't be that he had suspected Wilson and Jo of
theft, because, in the first place, he must have seen at a glance that
the safe was undisturbed; and in the second, that they had not taken
advantage of their opportunity for flight. It must have been something
in connection with this odd-looking image, then, at which he had been
so eager to look. Wilson returned to the next room. He picked the idol
from the floor. As he did so the head snapped back into place. He
brought it out into the firelight.
It looked like one of a hundred pictures he had seen of just such
curiosities--like the junk which clutters the windows of curio
dealers. The figure sat cross-legged with its heavy hands folded in
its lap. The face was flat and coarse, the lips thick, the nose squat
and ugly. Its carved headdress was of an Aztec pattern. The
cheek-bones were high, and the chin thick and receding. The girl
pressed close to his side as he held the thing in his lap with an odd
mixture of interest and fear.
"Aren't its eyes odd?" she exclaimed instantly.
They consisted of two polished stones as clear as diamonds, as
brightly eager as spiders' eyes. The light striking them caused them
to shine and glisten as though alive.
The girl glanced from the image to the man on the floor who looked now
more like a figure recumbent upon a mausoleum than a living man. It
was as though she was trying to guess the relationship between these
two. She had seen many such carved things as this upon her foreign
journeys with her father. It called him back strongly to her. She
turned again to the image and, attracted by the glitter in the eyes,
took it into her own lap.
Wilson watched her closely. He had an odd premonition of danger--a
feeling that somehow it would be better if the girl had not seen the
image. He even put out his hand to take it away from her, but was
arrested by the look of eagerness which had quickened her face. Her
cheeks had taken on color, her breathing came faster, and her whole
frame quivered with excitement.
"Better give the thing back to me," he said at length. He placed one
hand upon it but she resisted him.
"Come," he insisted, "I'll take it back to where I found it."
She raised her head with a nervous toss.
"No. Let it alone. Let me have it."
She drew it away from his hand. He stepped to her side, impelled by
something he could not analyze, and snatched it from her grasp. Her
lips quivered as though she were about to cry. She had never looked
more beautiful to him than she did at that moment. He felt a wave of
tenderness for her sweep over him. She was such a young-looking girl
to be here alone at the mercy of two men. At this moment she looked so
ridiculously like a little girl deprived of her doll that he was
inclined to give it back to her again with a laugh. But he paused. She
did not seem to be wholly herself. It was clear enough that the image
had produced some very distinct impression upon her--whether of a
nature akin to her crystal gazing he could not tell, although he
suspected something of the sort. The wounded man still lay prone upon
the rug before the fire. His muttering had ceased and his breathing
seemed more regular.
"Please," trembled the girl. "Please to let me take it again."
"Why do you wish it?"
"Oh, I--I can't tell you, but----"
She closed her lips tightly as though to check herself.
"I don't believe it is good for you," he said tenderly. "It seems to
cast a sort of spell over you."
"I know what it is! I know if I look deep into those eyes I shall see
my father. I feel that he is very near, somehow. I must look! I
must!"
She took it from his hands once more and he let it go. He was curious
to see how much truth there was in her impression and he felt that he
could take the idol from her at any time it seemed advisable to do so.
In the face of this new situation both of them lost interest in the
wounded man. He lay as though asleep.
The girl seated herself Turk fashion upon the rug before the grate
and, holding the golden figure in her lap, gazed down into the
sparkling stones which served for eyes. The light played upon the
dull, raw gold, throwing flickering shadows over its face. The thing
seemed to absorb the light growing warmer through it.
Wilson leaned forward to watch her with renewed interest. The contrast
between the tiny, ugly features of the image and the fresh,
palpitating face of the girl made an odd picture. As she sat so, the
lifeless eyes staring back at her with piercing insistence, it looked
for a moment like a silent contest between the two. She commanded and
the image challenged. A quickening glow suffused her neck and the
color crept to her cheeks. To Wilson it was as though she radiated
drowsy waves of warmth. With his eyes closed he would have said that
he had come to within a few inches of her, was looking at the thing
almost cheek to cheek with her. The room grew tense and silent. Her
eyes continued to brighten until it seemed as though they reflected
every dancing flame in the fire before her. Still the color deepened
in her cheeks until they grew to a rich carmine.
Wilson found himself leaning forward with quickening breath. She
seemed drifting further and further away from him and he sat fixed as
though in some trance. He noted the rhythmic heave of her bosom and
the full pulsation at the throat. The velvet sheen of the hair at her
temples caught new lights from the flames before her and held his
eyes like the dazzling spaces between the coals. Her lips moved, but
she spoke no word. Then it was that, seized with a nameless fear for
the girl, Wilson rose half way to his feet. He was checked by a
command from the man upon the floor.
"For the love of God, do not rouse her. She sees! She sees!"
The stranger struggled to his elbow and then to his knees, where he
remained staring intently at the girl, with eyes aglow. Then the girl
herself spoke.
"The lake! The lake!" she cried.
Wilson stepped to her side. He placed a hand firmly upon her
shoulder.
"Are you all right?" he asked.
She lifted eyes as inscrutable as those of the image. They were slow
moving and stared as blankly at him as at the pictures on the wall. He
bent closer.
"Comrade--comrade--are you all right?"
Her lips moved to faint, incoherent mutterings. She did not seem to be
in pain, and yet in travail of some sort.
The stranger, pale, his forehead beaded with the excitement of the
moment, had tottered to his feet He seized Wilson's arm almost
roughly.
"Let her alone!" he commanded. "Can't you see? Dios! the image
speaks!"
"The image? have you gone mad?"
"No! No!" he ran on excitedly. "Listen!"
The girl's brow was knitted. Her arms and limbs moved restlessly. She
looked like one upon the point of crying at being baffled.
"There is a mist, but I can see--I--I can see----"
She gave a little sob. This was too much for Wilson. He reached for
the image, but he had not taken a step before he heard the voice of
the stranger.
"Touch that and I shoot."
The voice was cold and steady. He half turned and saw that the man had
regained his weapon. The hand that held it was steady, the eyes back
of it merciless. For one moment Wilson considered the advisability of
springing for him. But he regained his senses sufficiently to realize
that he would only fall in his tracks. Even a wounded man is not to be
trifled with when holding a thirty-two caliber revolver.
"Step back!"
Wilson obeyed.
"Farther!"
[Illustration: "_For the love of God, do not rouse her. She sees! She
sees!_"]
He retreated almost to the door into the next room. From that moment
his eyes never left the hand which held the weapon. He watched it for
the first sign of unsteadiness, for the first evidence of weakness or
abstraction. He measured the distance between them, weighed to a
nicety every possibility, and bided his time. He wanted just the
merest ghost of a chance of reaching that lean frame before the steel
devil could spit death. What it all meant he did not know, but it was
clear that this stranger was willing to sacrifice the girl to further
any project of his into which she had so strangely fallen. It was also
clear to him that it did the girl no good to lose herself in such a
trance as this. The troubled expression of her face, the piteous cry
in her voice, her restlessness convinced him of this. When she had
spoken to him of crystal gazing, he had thought of it only as a
harmless amusement such as the Ouija board. This seemed different,
more serious, either owing to the surroundings or to some really
baneful influence from this thing of gold. And the responsibility of
it was his; it was he who had led the girl in here, it was even he who
had placed the image in her hands. At the fret of being forced to
stand there powerless, the moisture gathered on his brow.
The stranger knelt on one knee by the girl's side, facing the door and
Wilson. He placed one hand upon her brow and spoke to her in an even
tone that seemed to steady her thoughts. Her words became more
distinct.
"Look deep," he commanded. "Look deep and the mists will clear. Look
deep. Look deep."
His voice was the rhythmic monotone used to lull a patient into a
hypnotic trance. The girl responded quickly. The troubled expression
left her face, her breathing became deeper, and she spoke more
distinctly. Her eyes were still upon those of the image as though the
latter had caught and held them. She looked more herself, save for the
fact that she appeared to be even farther away in her thoughts than
when in normal sleep.
"Let the image speak through you," ran on the stranger. "Tell me what
you see or hear."
"The lake--it is very blue."
"Look again."
"I see mountains about the lake--very high mountains."
"Yes."
"One is very much higher than the others."
"Yes! Yes!"
"The trees reach from the lake halfway up its sides."
"Go on!" he cried excitedly.
"There they stop and the mountain rises to a point."
"Go on!"
"To the right there is a large crevice."
The stranger moistened his lips. He gave a swift glance at Wilson and
then turned his gaze to the girl.
"See, we will take a raft and go upon the lake. Now look--look hard
below the waters."
The girl appeared troubled at this. Her feet twitched and she threw
back her head as though for more air. Once more Wilson calculated the
distance between himself and that which stood for death. He found it
still levelled steadily. To jump would be only to fall halfway, and
yet his throat was beginning to ache with the strain. He felt within
him some new-born instinct impelling him to her side. She stood
somehow for something more than merely a fellow-creature in danger. He
took a quicker interest in her--an interest expressing itself now in
a sense of infinite tenderness. He resented the fact that she was
being led away from him into paths he could not follow--that she was
at the beck of this lean, cold-eyed stranger and his heathenish idol.
"Below the waters. Look! Look!"
"No! No!" she cried.
"The shrine is there. Seek it! Seek it!"
He forced the words through his teeth in his concentrated effort to
drive them into the girl's brain in the form of a command. But for
some reason she rebelled at doing this. It was as though to go below
the waters even in this condition choked her until she must gasp for
breath. It was evidently some secret which lay there--the location of
some shrine or hiding place which he most desired to locate through
her while in this psychic state, for he insisted upon this while she
struggled against it. Her head was lifted now as though, before
finally driven to take the plunge, she sought aid--not from anyone
here in the room, but from someone upon the borders of the lake where,
in her trance, she now stood. And it came. Her face brightened--her
whole body throbbed with renewed life. She threw out her hand with a
cry which startled both men.
"Father! Father!"
The wounded man, puzzled, drew back leaving for a moment the other
unguarded. Wilson sprang, and in three bounds was across the room. He
struck up the arm just as a finger pressed the trigger. The wounded
man fell back in a heap--far too exhausted to struggle further. Wilson
turned to the girl and swept the image out of her lap to the floor
where it lay blinking at the ceiling. The girl, blind and deaf to this
struggle, remained sitting upright with the happy smile of recognition
still about her mouth. She repeated over and over again the glad cry
of "Father! Father!"
Wilson stooped and repeated her name, but received no response. He
rubbed her forehead and her listless hands. Still she sat there
scarcely more than a clay image. Wilson turned upon the stranger with
his fists doubled up.
"Rouse her!" he cried. "Rouse her, or I'll throttle you!"
The man made his feet and staggered to the girl's side.
"Awake!" he commanded intensely.
The eyes instantly responded. It was as though a mist slowly faded
from before them, layer after layer, as fog rises from a lake in the
morning. Her mouth relaxed and expression returned to each feature.
When at length she became aware of her surroundings, she looked like
an awakened child. Pressing her fingers to her heavy eyes, she glanced
wonderingly about her. She could not understand the tragical attitude
of the two men who studied her so fixedly. She struggled to her feet
and regarded both men with fear. With her fingers on her chin, she
cowered back from them gazing to right and left as though looking for
someone she had expected.
"Father!" she exclaimed timidly. "Are you here, father?"
Wilson took her arm gently but firmly.
"Your father is not here, comrade. He has not been here. You--you
drowsed a bit, I guess."
She caught sight of the image on the floor and instantly understood.
She passed her hands over her eyes in an effort to recall what she had
seen.
"I remember--I remember," she faltered. "I was in some foreign
land--some strange place--and I saw--I saw my father."
She looked puzzled.
"That is odd, because it was _here_ that I saw him yesterday."
Her lips were dry and she asked Wilson for a glass of water. A pitcher
stood upon the table, which he had brought up with the other things.
When she had moistened her lips, she sat down again still a bit
stupid. The wounded man spoke.
"My dear," he said, "what you have just seen through the medium of
that image interests me more than I can tell you. It may be that I can
be of some help to you. My name is Sorez--and I know well that country
which you have just seen. It is many thousand miles from here."
"As far as the land of dreams," interrupted Wilson. "I think the girl
has been worried enough by such nonsense."
"You spoke of your father," continued Sorez, ignoring the outburst.
"Has he ever visited South America?"
"Many times. He was a sea captain, but he has not been home for years
now."
"Ah, Dios!" exclaimed Sorez, "I understand now why you saw so
clearly."
"You know my father--you have seen him?"
He waived her question aside impatiently. His strength was failing him
again and he seemed anxious to say what he had to say before he was
unable.
"Listen!" he began, fighting hard to preserve his consciousness. "You
have a power that will lead you to much. This image here has spoken
through you. He has a secret worth millions and----"
"But my father," pleaded the girl, with a tremor in her voice. "Can it
help me to him?"
"Yes! Yes! But do not leave me. Be patient. The priest--the priest is
close by. He--he did this," placing his hand over the wound, "and I
fear he--he may come again."
He staggered back a pace and stared in terror about him.
"I am not afraid of most things," he apologized, "but that devil he is
everywhere. He might be----"
There was a sound in the hall below. Sorez placed his hand to his
heart again and staggered back with a piteous appeal to Wilson.
"The image! The image!" he gasped. "For the love of God, do not let
him get it."
Then he sank in a faint to the floor.
Wilson looked at the girl. He saw her stoop for the revolver. She
thrust it in his hand.