"For the love of G.o.d, 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!"
[Ill.u.s.tration: "_For the love of G.o.d, 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 amus.e.m.e.nt 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.