Page:Vance--The trey o hearts.djvu/283

Rh Barcus and Judith, Seneca Trine craned his neck and managed to glimpse through his window the second motor-cycle as it started, Alan steering. Rose in the seat behind.

And something subtly pyschological drew the gaze of his daughter toward her father's window. As they chugged past the Mountain House Alan was conscious of a startled movement behind him and a convulsive tightening of the hands that clutched his belt. Instinctively he applied all the power that the motor could generate.

Sixty seconds later a flaunting banner of dust was all that remained to remind Mesquite that Romance had passed that way—that, and a series of passionate screams emanating from the bedchamber of Seneca Trine, where the cripple lay possessed by seven devils of insensate rage. Thus was his pleasure in the dawning of a new day ruined by the discovery that those whom he had thought to be safely entombed in the lowermost level of a flooded mine, twenty miles distant, were alive and sound and active enough to make yet another effort toward their salvation.

His screams brought attendance; but it was some time before his demands could be met and Marrophat and Jimmy roused from their heavy slumbers in adjoining chambers; and half an hour elapsed before the chauffeur, roused from his own well-earned rest,