C. N. Williamson & A. N. Williamson: 30+ Murder Mysteries & Adventure Novels (Illustrated). Charles Norris Williamson
the hardness from the exile's face.
"Be very careful," she said rapidly in English. "Don't speak, don't show anything you may feel. Perhaps we are watched. You are Maxime Dalahaide. We haven't come here for curiosity, as you think, but to save you. We have come thousands of miles for that."
"Why?" It was as if the question fell from his lips without volition. The man did not believe his own ears. He thought that he must have been seized with delirium.
"Because we believe in you and because we are friends of your sister's," Virginia answered. "A man you once knew is with us—Roger Broom. Do you remember?"
"Roger Broom!" Maxime repeated dazedly. "It is like an echo from the past. Yes—yes, I remember."
"It is through him that we have been able to reach you. He is close by, but dared not let you see him, until you had been warned. Now, we must arrange everything in a few minutes for your escape; the Commandant has been kind, but he may not give us long together."
"I think I must be dreaming," stammered Maxime, all his bitterness forgotten. "I've been ill. I don't understand things as quickly as I used. Escape! You have come here to—help me to escape. Yes, it is certainly a dream. I shall wake up by and by!"
"You will wake up free," said Virginia not daring to raise her voice above a low monotone. "Free, on our yacht, that has brought us from France to take you home."
Suddenly a glaze of tears overspread Maxime Dalahaide's dark eyes. "Home?" he echoed wistfully. "Home! Ah, if it might be!"
"It shall be," returned Virginia. "George, tell him our plan. You can do it better than I."
"The thing is to get you on board the yacht," said Trent. "After that, you're all right. We can show our heels to pretty well anything in these parts."
Dalahaide shook his head. "There are no words to thank you for what you have done, and would do for me," he answered. "But it is impossible. Once I thought of escape. I tried and failed, as others have tried and failed. After the second time, they put me in the Black Cell, and I saved myself from madness by calling to memory all of Shakespeare that I had ever learned. I don't say 'impossible' because I am afraid of that again. I have passed beyond fear of anything. What have I left to dread? I know the worst; I have lived through the worst that can befall a man. But in that dreadful blackness, where my very soul seemed to dissolve in night, I realized that, even if I could escape, how useless freedom would be if my innocence were not proved. I could not go to France or England. I should live a hunted life. As well be an exile here as nearer home—better, perhaps, now that the first bitterness has passed."
"You think this because you've been ill, and your blood runs slow," said George Trent. "All you need is to be strong again, and——"
"Strong again!" echoed Maxime, with sorrowful contempt. "I've been thanking heaven that I hadn't strength enough left to care for anything. It's true, as you say; the oil in my lamp of life burns low, and so much the better for me. What I want now is to get it all over as soon as may be. You are kind—you are so good to me that I am lost in wonder; yet even you cannot give me a freedom worth having. Take back my love to my sister, but tell her—tell her that I am content to stay as I am."
"Content to die, you mean!" cried Virginia.
"Oh, you are ill indeed to feel like this. How can you bear to stay here, when you have a chance to be a free man—even if not a happy man—to stay here, and let your enemy, who sent you to this place, laugh and think how his plot against you has succeeded?"
The dreamy look of weary resignation on Maxime Dalahaide's face changed to alertness. "Why do you speak of an enemy, and a plot against me?" he asked. "That poor girl was murdered; but I have never thought that she was killed because her murderer wished to involve me. That part was an accident. Liane Devereux——"
"Is not dead," broke in Virginia. "She is on our yacht now, in the harbour of Noumea. When you come, and she sees you, she will confess the whole plot."
"But I saw her lying dead—a thousand times that sight has been before my eyes."
"It was not she. If you want to know all, to fathom the whole mystery, and learn how to prove your own innocence, you will not refuse to do what we ask."
Maxime's thin face no longer looked like a carving in old ivory. The statue had come to life. The spring of hope had begun to stir in his veins. "If it were possible to prove it—at this late day!" he exclaimed. "But even if it were—you forget the tremendous difficulties in the way of escape. How could I reach your yacht? It could not come near enough to shore here to pick me up; even a small boat would be seen——"
"Not at night," said Virginia.
"Remember, it is moonlight. The night will be like day. Long before a small boat could reach the yacht from the beach she would be followed, overtaken, and not only should I be brought back, but I should have the misery of knowing that I had been the cause of bringing my brave friends into trouble. They would fire upon us. If I were killed it would matter little enough; but if you were to be shot——" He spoke to George Trent, but his eyes moved quickly to Virginia's face.
"My sister would be waiting for us on board the Bella Cuba," said Trent. "Roger Broom and I will take jolly good care of ourselves—and of you, too, if you'll only give us a chance."
"If you'd come here a month ago," sighed the prisoner, "before I got this wound in my back! Now I'm afraid it's too late. I've let myself go. I thought I saw the one door of escape for me opening—death; and instead of turning my back I walked toward it. I've let my strength down. I haven't eaten or slept much, and I began to have a pleasant feeling of slipping easily out with the tide. Now there's an incentive to stop, the tide's too strong and I'm too weak. I can't count on myself."
"Count on us," said George. "We'll see you through, you bet. And think of your sister. We promised we'd take you back with us. We can't go to her without you, after raising her hopes. It would kill her." Trent glanced at Virginia, as if expecting her to add encouraging arguments to his; but she was silent, her eyes alone appealing to Dalahaide. George Trent was her half-brother, and had known her all her life, but he felt the thrill of that look in the girl's beautiful eyes. How much more, then, must Maxime Dalahaide have felt it, he said to himself.
"It is the risk for you I think of—if I fail," the prisoner exclaimed. "If I had only myself to consider I should hesitate no longer."
"We have come a long, long way to you," Virginia's eyes said; and her lips would have added something had not George's hand fallen suddenly in warning on her shoulder. "Somebody is coming," he whispered. "For all our sakes, don't fail us, Dalahaide. We shall look for you to-night—there," and he nodded toward the water. "Make your way to the beach and hide among the rocks till you see our little boat. Don't take to the water—remember the sharks. If you're not there to-night, we'll hang about till the next."
"We'll wait till you come, if we wait a year," said Virginia.
There was time for no more. The Commandant, with Roger Broom by his side, appeared round the corner of the winding path near by.
"Well, mademoiselle, have we given you time to finish your interview, and has it been satisfactory?" asked the old Frenchman good-naturedly.
"You have given us just enough time, and it has been most satisfactory, thank you," the girl answered. "I hope," she added, "to make the very best use of it later." And again her eyes met those of the statue that she had waked to life.
Chapter IX.
A Cry Across the Water
It was night in the harbour of Noumea; a night of pitiless, white, revealing moonlight which sharpened the black outline of every shadow, and made the whitewashed wall of each low house gleam like mother-o'-pearl. Had there been no secret business on foot, Virginia