Page:The Popular Magazine v72 n1 (1924-04-20).djvu/49

 and helped her to a seat. The poet-guide loosened the boat, stood erect with the long oar in his hand and asked quietly, “All ready, signorina?”

“Yes, Pietro,” she said and then turned to her motor driver with, “You remember everything, don't you? That you are to be ready to start at an instant's notice, and that you are to remain here without fail, no matter what happens, until one of us comes?”

“Si, si, signorina. You may depend upon me.”

“Go ahead, Pietro,” she commanded as calmly as if they were bent on nothing more than an innocent excursion, and Pietro threw his vigorous young weight against the long oar, poised on the footboard, took a step backward and thrust the slender gondola past the launch and into the unruffled waters of the dark and narrow canal. He reached a sharp turn and with an apparently effortless motion swung the high prow outward, then sidewise, cleared a wall by a foot, and Jimmy saw that they had entered a long waterway on each side of which tier on tier of window boxes filled with fragrant plants, and walls cumbered with flowering creepers that seemed gently asleep, could be dimly discerned beneath the more open light of the high stars.

He peered at his companion whose dark dress made but a vague outline against the bordering darkness. Her face in profile showed pale and cleantly [sic] cut. Her chin was thrust forward and her head held high and purposefully. He could not avoid the admiring thought that “blood will tell!” and wondered if that long-dead Yancey Powell who had fought so desperately in this same ancient old city, and had so valorously escaped when the fight was done, might not have looked as she looked, some time, on perhaps this same rio. Colonel Yancey was dead, but the same buildings looked down on the same quiet stretch of waters then as now, and for centuries before had done the same. A masterful spirit with high and chivalrous aims had been then reviewed by these grim old watchers that stood like sentinels guarding their waterway, but they could have observed nothing more brave and daring of that fighting stock than on this quiet night. A Powell had come and gone. A Powell had come again, to dare again, to go again—if the luck of the day was with her! Suddenly Ware saw in this queer quest something as big and fine, if of less importance, as was ever the quest of the Grail. It meant as much to the girl at his side as ever the quest of the Grail to those crusaders of old. They had ventured into strange, distant and hard lands; but so had she. They had dared much, but their daring was no greater than hers. His heart warmed toward her until he yearned to take from her weaker shoulders this perilous task, and if it came, endure for her the burden of defeat. The proposed robbery of his own kinsman no longer appeared like a foolish burglary, but as something great beyond words. They were going out to rob a castle, he and she, and the dragon, his kinsman, was the enemy.

His meditations were ended by a backwash of the long, skillfully wielded oar that brought the slender gondola to a slow halt. They crept, under way, beneath a grated window but a few feet above, a window through which centuries past the armed sentries of powerful noblemen might have stood constant watch against enemy attack. It was unlighted, dark, moss covered.

“This is the window, signorina,” Pietro whispered as he reached upward, clutched the bars, and brought the gondola to a dead stop.

Gentle waves rippled past, washed against the gray walls, and quieted. The flowering creepers, water laved, swayed gently, and again came to rest. They had the stillness of the night, the serenity of the stars, the placidity of waters around them and from none of the dark old buildings about them came a light, or a sound.

“Good, go ahead with it,” the girl murmured, standing up, and Pietro clutched his fingers into the moss and handed backward a huge stone.

“Here! Let me take that,” Jimmy whispered, as he thrust himself in front of her and accepted it in his hands and quietly lowered it over the edge of the gondola so that it sank noiselessly into the water.

“Pietro has made many trips here in the night,” the girl whispered as the work of demolition went on. “All that he has been afraid of is that some one might discover it in the daytime. But all he has to do is to take down a lot of these stones—and out comes the iron grating! We've got an inside plan. Once I get through, I know just which way to go and turn to reach the main floor. If you will keep on taking those