Page:Roads of Destiny (1909).djvu/264

 Tansey rounded the table, and flung himself, with superb nerve, upon the Mexican. Just then a clangour began; the clocks of the city were tolling the midnight hour. Tansey clutched at Torres, and, for a moment, felt in his grasp the crunch of velvet and the cold facets of the glittering gems. The next instant, the bedecked caballero turned in his hands to a shrunken, leather-visaged, white-bearded, old, old, screaming mummy, sandalled, ragged, and four hundred and three. The Mexican woman was crawling to her feet, and laughing. She shook her brown hand in the face of the whining viejo.

“Go, now,” she cried, “and seek your señorita. It was I, Ramoncito, who brought you to this. Within each moon you eat of the life-giving chili. It was I that kept the wrong time for you. You should have eaten yesterday instead of to-morrow. It is too late. Off with you, hombre! You are too old for me!”

“This,” decided Tansey, releasing his hold of the graybeard, “is a private family matter concerning age, and no business of mine.”

With one of the table knives he hastened to saw asunder the fetters of the fair captive; and then, for the second time that night he kissed Katie Peek—tasted again the sweetness, the wonder, the thrill of it, attained once more the maximum of his incessant dreams.

The next instant an icy blade was driven deep between his shoulders; he felt his blood slowly congeal; heard the senile cackle of the perennial Spaniard; saw the Plaza rise and reel till the zenith crashed into the horizon—and knew no more.