Part 20 (1/2)
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? Pis.h.!.+ 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 las.h.i.+ng 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? Pis.h.!.+ 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 furnis.h.i.+ngs, 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.