Page:Held to Answer (1916).pdf/292

 "No! To me!" groaned the young man hoarsely, hurrying forward as the minister stepped down to meet him.

"Something awful! Can I see you absolutely alone?"

"Why, certainly, Rollie," replied the minister with ready sympathy. "Come this way."

Hastily the minister led his caller around the side of the wide, low-lying cottage to the outside entrance of his study.

"Is that door locked?" asked Rollie, as, once inside the room, he darted a frightened glance at the doorway connecting with the rest of the house.

Although knowing himself to be safe from interruption, the minister tactfully walked over and turned the key. He then locked the outer door as well, lowered the long shade at the wide side window, and snapped on the electric light.

"No eye and no ear can see or hear us now, save one," he said with sympathetic gravity. "Sit down."

Rollie sat on the very edge of the Morris chair, his elbows on the ends of its arms, while his head hung forward with an expression of ghastliness upon the weakly handsome features.

"You saw the paper?" he began.

The minister nodded.

"Here they are!" the young man gulped, the words breaking out of him abruptly. At the same time there was a quick motion of his hand, and a rainbow flash from his coat pocket to the blotter upon the desk, where the circlet of diamonds coiled like a blazing serpent that appeared to sway and writhe as each stone trembled from the force with which Burbeck had rid himself of the hateful touch. The minister started back with shock and a sudden sense of recollection.

"Oh, Rollie," he groaned, and then asked, as if