Elusive Isabel, by Jacques Futrelle Unknown (best fiction novels to read TXT) 📖

that; yes, very much like that,” assented the prince.

“Thank you. I merely wanted to understand it.” Mr. Grimm pulled a chair up against the door and sat down, crossing his legs. On his knees rested the barrel of a revolver, glittering, fascinating, in the semi-darkness. “Now, gentlemen,” and he glanced at his watch, “it’s twenty-one minutes of three o’clock. At three that mine will explode. We will all be in the room when it happens, unless his Highness sees fit to destroy the compact.”

Eyes sought eyes, and the prince removed his mask with a sudden gesture. His face was bloodless.

“If any man,” and Mr. Grimm gave Miss Thorne a quick glance, “I should say, any person, attempts to leave this room I know he will die; and there’s a bare chance that the percussion cap will fail to work. I can account for six of you, if there is a rush.”

“But, man, if that mine explodes we shall all be killed—blown to pieces!” burst from one of the cowled figures.

“If the percussion cap works,” supplemented Mr. Grimm.

Mingled emotions struggled in the flushed face of Isabel as she studied Mr. Grimm’s impassive countenance.

“I have never disappointed you yet, Miss Thorne,” he remarked as if it were an explanation. “I shall not now.”

She turned to the prince.

“Your Highness, I think it needless to argue further,” she said. “We have no choice in the matter; there is only one course—destroy the compact.”

“No!” was the curt answer.

“I believe I know Mr. Grimm better than you do,” she argued. “You think he will weaken; I know he will not. I am not arguing for him, nor for myself; I am arguing against the frightful loss that will come here in this room if the compact is not destroyed.”

[Illustration: “You think he will weaken; I know he will not.”]

“It’s absurd to let one man stand in the way,” declared the prince angrily.

“It might not be an impertinent question, your Highness,” commented Mr. Grimm, “for me to ask how you are going to prevent one man standing in the way?”

A quick change came over Miss Thorne’s face. The eyes hardened, the lips were set, and lines Mr. Grimm had never seen appeared about the mouth. Here, in a flash, the cloak of dissimulation was cast aside, and the woman stood forth, this keen, brilliant, determined woman who did things.

“The compact will be destroyed,” she said.

“No,” declared the prince.

“It must be destroyed.”

“Must? Must? Do you say must to me?”

“Yes, must,” she repeated steadily.

“And by what authority, please, do—”

“By that authority!” She drew a tiny, filigreed gold box from her bosom and cast it upon the table; the prince stared at it. “In the name of your sovereign—must!” she said again.

The prince turned away and began pacing, back and forth across the room with the parchment crumpled in his hand. For a minute or more Isabel stood watching him.

“Thirteen minutes!” Mr. Grimm announced coldly.

And now broke out an excited chatter, a babel of French, English, Italian, Spanish; those masked and cowled ones who had held silence for so long all began talking at once. One of them snatched at the crumpled compact in the prince’s hand, while all crowded around him arguing. Mr. Grimm sat perfectly still with the revolver barrel resting on his knees.

“Eleven minutes!” he announced again.

Suddenly the prince turned violently on Miss Thorne with rage-distorted face.

“Do you know what it means to you if I do as you say?” he demanded savagely. “It means you will be branded as traitor, that your name, your property—”

“If you will pardon me, your Highness,” she interrupted, “the power that I have used was given to me to use; I have used it. It is a matter to be settled between me and my government, and as far as it affects my person is of no consequence now. You will destroy the compact.”

“Nine minutes!” said Mr. Grimm monotonously.

Again the babel broke out.

“Do we understand that you want to see the compact?” one of the cowled men asked suddenly of Mr. Grimm as he turned.

“No, I don’t want to see it. I’d prefer not to see it.”

With hatred blazing in his eyes the prince made his way toward the lamp, holding a parchment toward the blaze.

“There’s nothing else to be done,” he exclaimed savagely.

“Just a moment, please,” Mr. Grimm interposed quickly. “Miss Thorne, is that the compact?”

She glanced at it, nodded her head, and then the flame caught the fringed edge of paper. It crackled, flashed, flamed, and at last, a thing of ashes, was scattered on the floor. Mr. Grimm rose.

“That is all, gentlemen,” he announced courteously. “You are free to go. You, your Highness, and Miss Thorne, will accompany me.”

He held open the door and there was almost a scramble to get out. The prince and Miss Thorne waited until the last.

“And, Miss Thorne, if you will give us a lift in your car?” Mr. Grimm suggested. “It is now four minutes of three.”

The automobile came in answer to a signal and the three in silence entered it. The car trembled and had just begun to move when Mr. Grimm remembered something, and leaped out.

“Wait for me!” he called. “There’s a man locked in the coal-bin!”

He disappeared into the house, and Miss Thorne, with a gasp of horror sank back in her seat with face like chalk. The prince glanced uneasily at his watch, then spoke curtly to the chauffeur.

“Run the car up out of danger; there’ll be an explosion there in a moment.”

They had gone perhaps a hundred feet when the building they had just left seemed to be lifted bodily from the ground by a great spurt of flame which tore through its center, then collapsed like a thing of cards. The prince, unmoved, glanced around at Miss Thorne; she lay in a dead faint beside him.

“Go ahead,” he commanded. “Baltimore.”

XXIV

THE PERSONAL EQUATION

Mr. Campbell ceased talking and the deep earnestness that had settled on his face passed, leaving instead the blank, inscrutable mask of benevolence behind which