Page:Gaston Leroux--The bride of the sun.djvu/146

132 to the two hundred silver soles … they were on the table there…. Not one over…. It was not much for betraying my mistress.… I did not know that was what they wanted…. When I told him so, he asked me what I would have done if I had known.… I answered I would have asked double the amount.…"

"What then?"

"Then he drew a knife and came at me…. I ran, but he followed.… He stabbed me once, and I escaped, but he followed.… I ran up-stairs.… He stabbed me again and again.… When I fell, he thought I was dead … and I am … I am … dying … oh!… Have mercy!" Libertad's last moment had come. The Marquis and Natividad, bending over him, were startled by the shot outside, and rushed down-stairs. They found Uncle Francis by the motor, staring down the road. When they asked him where Dick and little Christobal were, he gazed back as if not understanding, and vaguely answered that he was looking for them.

Don Christobal and Natividad, turning to look in the direction the old scientist was staring, suddenly saw two shadows dash across a moonlit stretch of road and vanish in the darkness of a ravine leading into the mountains, and spanned above by the railway bridge. Dick on