"We've had word that the government has men on the way. They'll be here to-night or to-morrow, working in cahoots with the fellows across the border. Why, d.a.m.n it all, Barnes, don't you know who it was that engineered that whole business last night?" He blurted it out angrily, casting off all reserve.

Barnes smiled. "I do. He is a secret agent from the emba.s.sy--"

"Secret granny!" almost shouted O'Dowd. "He is the slickest, cleverest crook that ever drew the breath of life. And he's got away with the jewels, for which you can whistle in vain, I'm thinking."

"For Heaven's sake, O'Dowd--" began Barnes, his blood like ice in his veins.

"But don't take my word for it. Ask her,--upstairs there, G.o.d bless her!--ask her if she knows Chester Naismith. She'll tell ye, my bucko.

He's been standing guard outside her window for the past three nights.

He's--"

"Now, I know you are mistaken," cried Barnes, a wave of relief surging over him. "He has been in this Tavern every night--"

"Sure he has. But he never was here after eleven o'clock, was he?

Answer me, did ye ever see him here after eleven in the evening? You did not,--not until last night, anyhow. In the struggle he had with Nicholas last night his whiskers came off and he was recognised. That's why poor old Nicholas is lying dead up there at the house now,--and will have a decent burial unbeknownst to anybody but his friends."

"Whiskers? Dead?" jerked from Barnes's lips.

"Didn't you know he had false ones on?"

"He did not have them on when he left me," declared Barnes. "Good G.o.d, O'Dowd, you can't mean that he--he killed--"

"He stuck a knife in his neck. The poor devil died while I was out skirmishing, but not before he whispered in the chief's ear the name of the man who did for him. The dirty snake! And the chief trusted him as no crook ever was trusted before. He knew him for what he was, but he thought he was loyal. And this is what he gets in return for saving the dog's life in Buda Pesth three years ago. In the name of G.o.d, Barnes, how did you happen to fall in with the villain?"

Barnes pa.s.sed his hand over his brow, dazed beyond the power of speech.

His gaze rested on Putnam Jones. Suddenly something seemed to have struck him between the eyes. He almost staggered under the imaginary impact. Jones! Was Jones a party to this--He started forward, an oath on his lips, prepared to leap upon the man and throttle the truth out of him. As abruptly he checked himself. The cunning that inspired the actions of every one of these people had communicated itself to him. A false move now would ruin everything. Putnam Jones would have to be handled with gloves, and gently at that.

"He--he represented himself as a book-agent," he mumbled, striving to collect himself. "Jones knew him. Said he had been around here for weeks. I--I--

"That's the man," said O'Dowd, scowling. "He trotted all over the county, selling books. For the love of it, do ye think? Not much. He had other fish to fry, you may be sure. I talked with him the night you dined at Green Fancy. He beat you to the Tavern, I dare say. It was his second night on guard below the--below her window. He told me how he shinned up and down one of these porch posts, so as not to let old Jones get onto the fact he was out of his room. He had old Jones fooled as badly--What are you glaring at HIM for? I was about to say he had old Jones as badly fooled as you--or worse, d.a.m.n him. Barnes, if we ever lay hands on that friend of yours,--well, he won't have to fry in h.e.l.l. He'll be burnt alive. Thank G.o.d, my mind's at rest on one score.

SHE didn't skip out with him. They all think she did. Not one of them suspects that she came away with you. There is plenty of evidence that she let him in through her window--"

"All ready, O'Dowd," called Loeb. "Come along, please."

"Coming," said the Irishman. To Barnes: "Don't blame yourself, old man.

You are not the only one who has been hoodwinked. He fooled men a long shot keener than you are, so--All right! Coming. See you later, Barnes.

So long!"

CHAPTER XVI

THE FIRST WAYFARER VISITS A SHRINE, CONFESSES, AND TAKES AN OATH

How was he to find the courage to impart the appalling news to her? He was now convinced beyond all doubt that the so-called Sprouse had made off with the priceless treasure and that only a miracle could bring about its recovery. O'Dowd's estimate of the man's cleverness was amply supported by what Barnes knew of him. He knew him to be the personification of craftiness, and of daring. It was not surprising that he had been tricked by this devil's own genius. He recalled his admiration, his wonder over the man's artfulness; he groaned as he thought of the pride he had felt in being accorded the privilege of helping him!

Sitting glumly in a corner of the tap-room, watching but not listening to the spouting Mr. Rushcroft, (who was regaling the cellarer and two vastly impressed countrymen with the story of his appearance before Queen Victoria and the Royal Family), Barnes went over the events of the past twenty-four hours, deriving from his reflections a few fairly reasonable deductions as to his place in the plans of the dauntless Mr.

Sprouse.

In the first place, Sprouse, being aware of his somewhat ardent interest in the fair captive, took a long and desperate chance on his susceptibility. With incomprehensible boldness he decided to make an accomplice of the eager and unsuspecting knight-errant! His cunningly devised tale,--in which there was more than a little of the truth,--served to excite the interest and ultimately to win the co-operation of the New Yorker. His object in enlisting this support was now perfectly clear to the victim of his duplicity. Barnes had admitted that he was bound by a promise to aid the prisoner in an effort to escape from the house; even a slow-witted person would have reached the conclusion that a partial understanding at least existed between captive and champion. Sprouse staked everything on that conviction. Through Barnes he counted on effecting an entrance to the almost hermetically sealed house.

Evidently the simplest, and perhaps the only, means of gaining admission was through the very window he was supposed to guard. Once inside her room, with the aid and connivance of one in whom the occupant placed the utmost confidence, he would be in a position to employ his marvellous talents in accomplishing his own peculiar ends.

Barnes recalled all of the elaborate details preliminary to the actual performance of that amazing feat, and realised to what extent he had been shaped into a tool to be used by the master craftsman. He saw through the whole Machiavellian scheme, and he was now morally certain that Sprouse would have sacrificed him without the slightest hesitation.

In the event that anything went wrong with their enterprise, the man would have shot him dead and earned the grat.i.tude and commendation of his a.s.sociates! There would be no one to question him, no one to say that he had failed in the duty set upon him by the master of the house.

He would have been glorified and not crucified by his friends.

Up to the point when he actually pa.s.sed through the window Sprouse could have justified himself by shooting the would-be rescuer. Up to that point, Barnes was of inestimable value to him; after that,--well, he had proved that he was capable of taking care of himself.

Mr. Dillingford came and p.r.o.nounced sentence. He informed the rueful thinker that the young lady wanted to see him at once in Miss Thackeray's room.

With a heavy heart he mounted the stairs. At the top he paused to deliberate. Would it not be better to keep her in ignorance? What was to be gained by revealing to her the--But Miss Thackeray was luring him on to destruction. She stood outside the door and beckoned. That in itself was ominous. Why should she wriggle a forefinger at him instead of calling out in her usual free-and-easy manner? There was foreboding--

"Is Mr. Barnes coming?" His heart bounded perceptibly at the sound of that soft, eager voice from the interior of the room.

"By fits and starts," said Miss Thackeray critically. "Yes, he has started again."

She closed the door from the outside, and Barnes was alone with the cousin of kings and queens and princes.

"I feared you had deserted me," she said, holding out her hand to him as he strode across the room. S he did not rise from the chair in which she was seated by the window. The lower wings of the old-fashioned shutters were closed except for a narrow strip; light streamed down upon her wavy golden hair from the upper half of the cas.e.m.e.nt. She was attired in a gorgeously flowered dressing-gown; he had seen it once before, draping the matutinal figure of Miss Thackeray as she glided through the hall with a breakfast tray which Miss Tilly had flatly refused to carry to her room: being no servant, she declared with heat.

"I saw no occasion to disturb your rest," he mumbled. "Nothing--nothing new has turned up."

"I have been peeping," she said, looking at him searchingly. A little line of anxiety lay between her eyes. "Where is Mr. Loeb going, Mr.

Barnes?"

He noted the omission of Mr. O'Dowd. "To Hornville, I believe. They stopped for gasoline."

"Is he running away?" was her disconcerting question.

"O'Dowd says he is to be gone for a few days on business," he equivocated.

"He will not return," she said quietly. "He is a coward at heart. Oh, I know him well," she went on, scorn in her voice.

"Was I wrong in not trying to stop him?" he asked.

She pondered this for a moment. "No," she said, but he caught the dubious note in her voice. "It is just as well, perhaps, that he should disappear. Nothing is to be gained now by his seizure. Next week, yes; but to-day, no. His flight to-day spares--but we are more interested in the man Sprouse. Has he returned?"

"No, Miss Cameron," said he ruefully. And then, without a single reservation, he laid bare the story of Sprouse's defection. When he inquired if she had heard of the man known as Chester Naismith, she confirmed his worst fears by describing him as the guard who watched beneath her window. He was known to her as a thief of international fame. The light died out of her lovely eyes as the truth dawned upon her; her lips trembled, her shoulders drooped.

"What a fool I've been," she mourned. "What a fool I was to accept the responsibility of--"

"Don't blame yourself," he implored. "Blame me. I am the fool, the stupidest fool that ever lived. He played with me as if I were the simplest child."

"Ah, my friend, why do you say that? Played with you? He has tricked some of the shrewdest men in the world. There are no simple children at Green Fancy. They are men with the brains of foxes and the hearts of wolves. To deceive you was child's play. You are an honest man. It is always the honest man who is the victim; he is never the culprit. If honest men were as smart as the corrupt ones, Mr. Barnes, there would be no such thing as crime. If the honest man kept one hand on his purse and the other on his revolver, he would be more than a match for the thief. You were no match for Chester Naismith. Do not look so glum. The shrewdest police officers in Europe have never been able to cope with him. Why should you despair?"