I LIGHTED my candle and stepped into the closet, shutting the door behind me. The small space, no longer cluttered by old odds and ends of gardening tools, was clear to my eyes in every corner, and presented so commonplace an appearance that I was almost ready to believe that nightmares had possessed me lately, and that an especially vivid one had brought me to stand absurdly here in the sleeping house peering at an innocent board wall. Nevertheless, I set down my candle on the floor and attacked the boards put up by Henry with what skill and energy I could.

They moved at once as though they were on oiled hinges, and the whole low side of the closet came forward in my hands. Before me opened the black hole into which I had fallen the morning when Mary and I had explored the kitchen after Delia's departure. I did not know what lay there in the dark, but, unless I had the courage of my final adventure, there was no use in having braved and endured so much. I slid my lighted candle ahead of me and crept along the floor into the hole.

I had to creep only for an instant, then damp, cool space opened above my head and I stood up. I was in a narrow passageway of enormous height; in fact, the whole outer wall of the house stood at my right hand, and the whole inner wall at my left, crossed here and there by the beams of the deep window sills to which Mrs. Brane had called my attention on the evening of my arrival at “The Pines.” It was the most curious place. A foot or two in front of me a narrow stairs made of packing-boxes and odd pieces of lumber nailed together, went up between the walls. Holding my candle high, so that as far as possible I could see before and above me, I began to mount the steps. I was weak with excitement and with the heavy beating of my heart.

I counted sixteen steps, and saw that I had come to the top of the queer flight. The narrow, enormously high, passage, like an alley between towering sky-scrapers led on with an odd look, somewhere ahead of me sloping up. I walked perhaps twenty steps, and saw that I had come to the foot of an inclined plane. Probably Mr. Brane had found it easier of construction than his amateur stairs. I mounted it slowly, stopping to listen and to hold my breath. There was no sound in the house but the faint scuttling of rats and the faint, faint pressure of my steps. I realized that I must now be on a level with the passage in the northern wing, and that here it was that the various housekeepers and servants had heard a ghostly footfall or a gusty sigh. It would be easy enough to play ghost here; in fact, I felt like an unholy spirit entombed between the walls of the sleeping, unsuspecting house.

I reached the top of the inclined plane, and stopped with my left hand against the wall. Here I could see a long row of parallel rafters between which ran horizontal beams. In the spaces so enclosed lay the rows of bricks, hardened cement curling along their edges. My hand rested against the first parallel rafter on the left side. I began to count: one, two, three, four, five. This was certainly the fifth rafter on the left wall from the top of the inclined plane. I put down my candle. If my chart was right, and not the crazy fiction of a diseased brain as I half imagined it to be, this fifth rafter hid the iron box in which lay a treasure thought by the writer of the directions to be “worthy of any risk, almost of any crime.” I put my arms out at a level with my shoulders, and grasped the beam in both hands. I pulled. Instantly, a section about as long as myself moved forward. I pulled again. This time the heavy beam came out suddenly, and I fell with it. The thud seemed to me loud enough to wake the dead. I crouched, holding my breath, where I had fallen, then, freeing myself from the beam which had caught my skirt, I stood up. I peered into the opening behind the beam. In the narrow darkness of the space there seemed to be a narrower, denser darkness. I put my hand on it, and touched the edge of a long, narrow box.

Instantly the fascination of all stories of hidden treasure, the wonder thrill of Ali Baba's hidden cave, the spell of Monte Cristo, had me, and I felt no fear of any kind. Wounds, and pains, and terrors dropped from me. I pulled out the box as boldly and as eagerly as any pirate in a tale. It was heavy, the box. I eased it to the floor and laid it flat. It was an old, shallow box of iron, rusted and stained. There was no mark of any kind upon it, just a keyhole in the front. I must now find the eighteenth brick in the thirtieth row in order to possess myself of the key to my treasure. I counted carefully, pressing each brick with an unsteady, feverish finger. On the thirtieth row from the floor, eighteen bricks from the fifth rafter... yes, this was certainly the thirtieth row. I counted twice to make sure, and now, from the rafter, the eighteenth brick. It looked quite as secure as any other, and, indeed, I had to work hard to clear away the cement that held it in place. When that was done, I had no difficulty in loosening it. I took it out—yes, there behind it lay an iron key. I did not stop to replace the brick, but, hurrying back to my box, knelt down before it. My hands were shaking so that I had to steady my right with my left in order to fit in the key.

It would not turn. I worked and twisted and poked. Nothing would move the rusty lock. Sweat streamed down my face. There was nothing for it but to go back to the kitchen, get some kerosene, pour it into the lock, and so oil the rusty contrivance. Every minute was as precious as life itself. I made the trip at desperate speed, returned with a small bottle full of oil, and saturated the lock. After another five minutes of fruitless twisting, suddenly the key turned. I grasped the lid. It opened with a faint, protesting squeak.

It seemed to me at first that the box was full of bright and moving life; then I saw, with a catching breath, that the flame of my candle played across the surface of a hundred gems. There lay in the box an ecclesiastical robe of some kind, encrusted all over with jewels. And at one end rested a slender circlet, like a Virgin's crown, studded with crimson, and blue, and white, and yellow stones. So did the whole bewildering, beautiful thing gleam and glisten and shoot sparks that it seemed indeed to be on fire. I have never till that night felt the mysterious lure of precious stones. Kneeling there alone in the strange hiding-place, I was possessed by an intolerable longing to escape with these glittering things, and to live somewhere in secret, to fondle and cherish their unearthly fires. It was a thirst, an appetite, the explanation of all the terrible digging and delving, the sweat and the exhaustion of the mine... it was something akin to the hypnotism that the glittering eye of the serpent has for its victim, a desire, a peril rooted deep in the hearts of men, one of the most mysterious things in our mysterious spirit. I knelt there, forgetful of my danger, forgetful of my life, forgetful of everything except the beauty of those stones. Then, with a violent start, I remembered. I carefully drew out the robe, laid it over my arm, and, taking the heavy circlet in my hand, I prepared myself for flight. The load was extraordinarily heavy. I bent under it.

I had taken perhaps six steps towards safety when I heard a sound.

It was not the sound of rats, it was not the sound of my own light step... it was something else. I did not know what that sound was, but some instinct told me that it was a danger signal. I put out my candle and flattened myself against the wall. Then I did distinctly hear an approaching step. It was not anywhere else in the house. It was between those two walls. It was ascending the steps, it was coming up the plane. Through the pitchy darkness it advanced, bringing with it no light, but moving surely as though it knew every step of the way. There was hardly room for two people between those high walls; any one passing me, where I stood, must brush against me. I dared not move even to lay down my treasure and put myself into an attitude of self-defense.

I thought that my only chance lay in the miracle of being passed without notice. Near to me the footsteps stopped, and I remembered that any foot coming along the passage would perforce strike against the box and the fallen beam. There was no hope. Nevertheless, like some frozen image, I stood there clasping the robe and crown, incapable of motion, incapable of thought.

I could hear a faint breathing in the dark. It was not more than two feet away from me. It seemed to my straining eyeballs that I could make out the lines of a body standing there, its blank face turned in my direction. Then—my heart leaped with the terror of it—the invisible being laughed.

“You have n't gone,” said the low, sweet, horrible voice; “I can smell the candle, so you must have put it out when you heard me. If I had n't struck my foot against a board, I'd have come upon you in the midst of your interesting work. There's no place to hide here. You've either run back to the end of the passage and crept in under my bedclothes, or you're flattened up against the wall. I think you're near me. I think I hear your heart...” No doubt, she did; it was laboring like a ship in a storm. She paused probably to listen to my pounding blood, then she laughed again. “You're badly scared, aren't you? It's a feeling of security, my girl, compared to the fright you'll get later. Why don't you scream? Too scared? Or are you afraid you'll kill somebody else, besides Robbie, of fright. A ghost screaming in the wall! Grrrrrr!”

I can give no idea of the terrible sound she made in her throat. And the truth was I could n't scream. I was pinned there against the wall as though there were hands around my neck.

She made a step forward—it was like a ghastly game of Blind Man's Buff; most of those games must be based on fearful race-memories of outgrown terrors; then she gave a sudden spring to one side, an instinctive, beastlike movement, and her hand struck my face. Instantly she had flung herself upon me. I let fall my booty and fought with all my strength. I might as well have struggled with a tigress. She was made of strings of steel. Her arms and legs twisted about me like serpents, her furious strength was disgusting, loathsome, her breath beat upon my face. I fell under her, and she turned up my skirt over my head, fastening it in the darkness with such devilish quick skill that I could not move my arms. Also she crammed fold after fold into my mouth till I was gagged, my jaws forced open till they ached. The pain in my throat and neck was intolerable.

Then, groping about, she found the candle and I heard her strike a match. Afterwards she inspected the treasure, drawing deep sighs of satisfaction and murmuring to herself. After a long time of enjoyment, she sat down beside me, placing the candle so that it shone upon me. I could see the light through the thinnish stuff over my face.

“Now, Janice,” she said, “I shall make you more comfortable, and then I shall afford you some of the most excellent entertainment you can well imagine. There are people all over the world who would give ten years of their lives to hear what you are going to hear to-night. I have some interesting stories to tell. There is plenty of time before us. I shall not have to leave you till just before daybreak, and we might as well have a pleasant time together. I was too busy the other afternoon in the woods and too hurried to give you any real attention. This time I shall do my duty by you. You are really rather a remarkable girl, and I am proud of you. That beating I gave you would have laid up most young women for a fortnight. But you are made of adventurous stuff.” She sighed, a strange sound to come from her lips; then, skillfully, she drew the skirt partially from my face, possessed herself of my hands which she bound securely with a string she took from her pocket—a piece of twine which, if I stirred a finger, cut into my wrists like a knife. She gradually drew the gag out of my mouth, keeping a strangling hold on my throat as she did so, and when my jaw snapped back in place—it had been almost out of its socket—still keeping that grip on my wind-pipe, she tied a silk handkerchief over my mouth, knotting it tightly behind my head. Then she released me and moved a little away. I looked at her, no doubt, with the eyes of a trapped animal, so that, bending down to inspect me, she laughed again.

“I'm not going to kill you, you know,” she said sweetly,—“not yet. I could have killed you the other day if it had n't been more to my purpose to let you live. I could have killed you any time these past few weeks. Don't you know that, you silly, reckless child? All of you here in this absurd house lay in the hollow of my hand.” She held out one of her very long, slender hands, so like my own, as she spoke, and slowly, tensely, drew her fingers together as though she were crushing some small live thing to death. “I did n't really mean to kill Robbie. But I did mean to get him out of that room, alive or dead. He killed himself, which saved me the trouble. I don't like killing children—it's quite untrue what they say of me in that respect—though I've been driven to it once or twice. It's being too squeamish about babies' lives that's put an end to most careers of burglary. That's the God's truth, Janice. You're shaking, are n't you? How queer it must be to have nerves like that—young, innocent, ignorant nerves! Poor Janice! Poor little red-haired facsimile of myself! What explanation did you find for that resemblance? I fancied you'd frighten yourself into a superstitious spasm over it, and stop your night-meddling for good. But you didn't. I'll be bound, though, that the true explanation never occurred to you.”

I had been staring up into her beautiful, ghastly face, but now I closed my eyes. A most intolerable thought had come to me. It came slowly, gropingly, out of the remote past, and it turned my heart into a heavy gray stone.

“Are you remembering, Janice? No, that's not possible. You were too young.” She leaned over me again, and pushed back a lock of hair that had been troubling my eyes. “You've grown to be a very beautiful girl.”

I groaned aloud, and writhed there. I knew the truth now. There was a mother from whom I had been taken when I was a few months old—a mother of whom my father would never let me speak, a mother I had been told to forget, to blot out of my imagination as though she had never been. What dreadful reason my father must have had for his secret, sordid manner of living! What a shadow had lain on my childhood with its drab wanderings, its homelessness, its disgraceful shifts and pitiful poverty! All that far-off misery, which I had tried so hard to forget in the new land, came back upon me now with an added, crushing weight. I lay there and longed to die.

The woman began to talk again.

“Yes,” she said, “I am your mother. My name was Wenda Tour, and I married Sergius Gale, who was your father. I am Polish-French, and he was Russian-French. When I married him he was an innocent, little, pale-faced student at the University of Moscow. I was only sixteen, myself, training for a dancer, acting... a clever, abused, gifted young waif, and fairly innocent, too, though I'd always been light-fingered and skillful at all sorts of tricks. I think I was in love with Sergius; at any rate, I was anxious to escape from the trainer, who was a brute. But Sergius began to bore me. Oh, my God! how insufferably he bored me! And he was so wearisomely weak, weaker than most men, and, the Lord knows, they're mostly made of butter, or milk-and-water mixtures. And you bored me dreadfully, too; the very thought of you before you came filled me with a real distaste for life. By the time you made your squalling entrance into the world, I had got myself into rather complicated trouble, and managed to make a scapegoat of your father, the poor fool! It was a sharp business, and it might have made us both rich, but I was clumsier than I am now, and Sergius was a hindrance. It did n't quite go through, and I had to make a get-away, a quick one. I've made some even quicker since then. After he'd spent some sobering and salutary months in a Russian prison, your father came out, reformed and completely cured of his passion for red-haired vixens with a natural taste for crime. I've often wondered how he treated you, little miniature of myself as you were even in your cradle. I don't believe you had a very comfortable childhood, Janice. The crudest thing I ever did, and the wickedest, was to let you come into the world, or, having let you come, to allow you to remain here. I ought to have put you out of your misery before it had really begun. You wouldn't be lying here shaking. You would n't have to pay the piper for me as I fear I shall be forced to make you pay before I leave you to-night. I hate to do it. I honestly do. There must be a soft spot left in me somewhere, but there's no use balking. It's got to be done. It's too good a chance to miss. I can wipe out my past as though it had been written on a slate. You can't blame me yourself, Janice. The jewels mean wealth, and your death means my freedom. When they find you here—and they will find you—they will think that they have found my corpse. Don't you see? Even Maida, even the Baron, even Jaffrey, even the priest, will swear to it—you see. If you had n't been so clever, or a little bit cleverer, you would n't have played my game, or you'd have taken more pains to keep your plan a secret from me. Once I was sure you did n't think your double a ghost, I began to suspect you; when you pulled that lover of yours”—she laughed, and even in my misery I felt the sting of anger and of shame—“of ours, I should say—when you pulled him out of the mud, why, I found myself able to read you like a child's first primer. Oh, you've been a nuisance to me, kept me on pins and needles. I knew you would n't dare to search the house. I suppose you guessed that would mean the end of your life, but you've certainly given me some unhappy minutes. That fool of a Baron, blabbing out his secret to you... but I made it all work out to my salvation. They've nabbed the Baron and the priest; I suppose they'll get Maida to-night; Jaffrey will be caught snoring in his bed”—she chuckled—“and there's an end to all my partners, all the fools that thought they'd come in for a share of booty. The only thing that bothers me is that they'll never know how neatly I bagged them all, and made a get-away myself. They will think me dead. They'll bear witness. They'll point at your dead body, Janice, and say, 'Yes, that's she.' Oh, it's a rare trick I'm playing on the police, on the gang, on every one—especially that cat of a Hovey with his eyes.” She rubbed her lips angrily, a curious, to me inexplicable, gesture. “But it's a poor joke for you, my girl. Playing your hand alone against a lot of hardened old hands like us is a fool's work. That's what it is! Did you think I'd let you run off with a fortune under my very nose? No; you'll have to pay for that insolence. Daughter or no daughter, you'll have to pay. At least, I'll be saving your soul alive. If I had n't got back to you to-night, you'd be a thief flying out into the world. Perhaps your dying to-night is the best thing that could happen to you. I don't know. Looking back—well, it's hard to say.”

She sat there thinking, forgetful of me, and I opened my miserable eyes and stared hopelessly at the clear, hard profile, so beautiful, so evil, so unutterably merciless. She had been sixteen when I was born, twenty years ago. She was now only thirty-six, and yet her face was almost old.

She turned upon me again with her ghastly smile. “You don't look pleased to see your mother, my dear. Perhaps I was a trifle rough with you at our first interview, but you've been spared a great many worse thrashings by having been separated from me at such an early age. I have a devilish temper, as you know. I'd probably have flogged you to death before you were out of your pinafores. I'd like to hear your history—oh, I've kept track of its outlines, I always thought you might some day be useful—but I don't dare take that handkerchief off of your mouth. That handkerchief belonged to my second husband, the Comte de TrÈme.... Yes, I went up in the world after I'd put Sergius into prison. I've been a great lady. It's a tremendous advantage to any career, to learn the grand air and to get a smattering of education. Poor TrÈme! He was n't quite the weakling that most of them have been. I have a certain respect for him actually. He was a good man, and no milk and water in his veins, either. If any one could have exorcised the devil in me, it was he. He did his best, but I was too much for him... and in the end, poor fool, he put a bullet into his brain because—oh, these idiot aristocrats!—of the disgrace. It was after TrÈme, a long while after TrÈme, when I was queening it in St. Petersburg,—because, you see, I did n't fall into disgrace at all; I let TrÈme shoulder it; he was dead, and it could n't hurt him, and I was glad to stab that high-nosed family of his,—about three years after his death, I suppose, when the ex-army captain came along. Brane, you know, Theodore Brane——He was a handsome chap, long and lean and blue-eyed. I lost my head over him. I was still pretty young, twenty or thereabouts. He would n't marry me, d—— him! And I was a fool. That's where I lost my footing. Well, this is going to put me back again and revenge me on that cold-blooded coward. We lived together, and we lived like princes—on TrÈme's fortune. You should have seen his family! It was when the TrÈme estate was bled dry that I happened to remember those jewels. Yes. I'd seen them in the cathedral at Moscow in a secret crypt, down under the earth. I was a child at the time, a little red-haired imp of nine or ten, and I got round a silly old sheep of a priest, and begged him so hard to let me go down through the trapdoor with him that he consented. He thought it could do no harm, I suppose,—a child of that age! I saw the Beloved Virgin of the Jewels! She stood there blazing, a candlestick made of solid gold burning on her right hand and her left—an unforgettable sight—the robe and the circlet that are here beside us now in Brane's double wall in North Carolina... God! it's strange—this life!

“I often thought of that Holy Wealthy Lady in her crypt. When Brane and I were at an end of our means, and of our wits, and he beginning to get tired of the connection, I made up my mind to have a try at the Moscow Virgin's wardrobe. I did n't tell Brane, though he was a thief himself, cashiered from the British army for looting in India. I thought this scheme would be a bit too stiff for him. I went alone to Moscow, and I became the most pious frequenter of ikons, the most devout of worshipers, a generous patron to all droning priests. And there was one—one with a big, oval Christ-face—that I meant to corrupt. He was rotten to the core, anyway, a grayish-white sepulcher if ever there was one. I got him so that he cringed at my feet. He was a white, soft worm—ugh! I chose him for the scapegoat. That's the real secret of my success, Janice. I never forgot to provide a scapegoat, some one upon whom the police were bound to tumble headlong at the very first investigation. I am afraid you are the scapegoat this time—you and 'Dabney'—this will give his fool-heart a twist, set him to rights until next time.

“It's a rotten trick to play on you, but you should n't have mixed up in it. A sensible girl would n't have taken the bait—a slip of paper handed to her in the street! For shame, Janice! It was my first idea, and I laughed at it. I thought I'd have to think up something better. But it worked. Folly is just as deserving of punishment as crime—more so, I believe. It's only just that a fool should lie tied up and gagged. That's the way the world works, and it's not such a bad world, after all, if you make yourself its master and kick over a few conventions....

“Well, Father Gast ate out of my hand, and thought me as beautiful as one of God's angels, only a little more merciful to the desires of men... and one day he gave me a permit, got a young acolyte of the cathedral to take me down to worship at the shrine of the Most Beloved Virgin of the Jewels. It was dark in the crypt, except for the candle that poor boy carried above his head. The Virgin stood there glistening. I knelt down to pray. The boy knelt down. I snatched the candlestick of gold that stood on the Virgin's right hand and cracked his skull. He dropped without so much as a whimper. Then I stripped our Holy Lady, and came up out of the crypt.”

She stopped to draw a long, long breath, as she must have stopped when, in the dim Kremlin, she had come up out of the bowels of the earth carrying her treasure, leaving the boy acolyte senseless before the naked shrine. For all the terrible preoccupation of my mind, racing with death, I could not help but listen to her story. My imagination seemed to be stimulated by the terror of my plight. I might have been in the crypt; I seemed to smell the damp, incense-laden, close smell of candle-lighted chapels. I felt the weight of the jeweled robe, the fearful necessity for escape.

After her long breath, she began again eagerly.

“I came up out of the crypt, and I called to my Christ-faced baba. He was waiting for me near the altar at his hypocritical prayers. He came quickly over to me, staring at the bundle in my arms, and I kept him fascinated by the smile I wore. I can command the look in my eyes at such moments. It's the eyes that give away a secret. You can see the change of mood, the intention to deceive, the fear, the suspicion, the decision to kill—but even in those days I knew how to guard my eyes. Father Gast looked at me, and I smiled.

“'Hist!' I said to him, 'I have something amusing to show you. Kneel down by this opening and look at the little acolyte. Lean forward.'

“The fool obeyed. He knelt, his big hands holding to the edge of the trap, and peered into the darkness below. I let the door of the trap fall. It was a square of solid masonry, easy enough to let fall, but too heavy for one man to lift alone. But he was a trifle too quick for me, drew back his head like a snake. It caught his hands. He howled like a dog. I tore off a fastening of the Virgin's robe and hid it in his gown. He fainted before I had gone out of the place.

“I had a hand-bag and a waiting droshky; I packed away my jewels and left Moscow by the first train. I went to Paris, traveling at. speed with all the art of disguise and subterfuge I could command. Nevertheless, on my way from the Gare du Nord to the address Brane had given me, I thought that I was being followed. Of course, I gave the cocher another number, went in at a certain house I knew, escaped by the back, and made my way on foot to Brane's apartment, unobserved. They made no difficulty about admitting me. I found everything in confusion. Brane had packed his boxes. He was planning a journey.” She laughed bitterly. “I did n't know it then, but, in the interval, he'd met this little black-eyed American woman and he'd made up his mind to be a bon sujet. He was going to give me the slip. I opened one of his boxes, wrapped up my booty in a dress-coat of his, well at the bottom, and then I hid myself. I wanted to spy upon my Englishman. Brane came in, locked up his luggage, and went out again at once. He was in the apartments barely five minutes, and I never saw him again—the handsome, good-for-nothing devil! I waited for him to come back. Presently some men came in and carried off the boxes. I waited in the apartment for several hours, but my lover did not return. He had gone to America, Janice—think of it! with that treasure in his box.”

The candle, which had been flickering for several minutes, here went out, and she was busy for a while, taking another from her pocket and lighting it. I wondered what time it was. Surely long past midnight. The minutes seemed to hurry through my brain on wings of fear. If only she would sit there, talking, talking, telling me the story of her crimes, till daylight! Then there might be some faint hope for me. They would discover my absence, they would hunt. I might be able to work the handkerchief off of my mouth and risk a cry for help. All sorts of impossible hopes kept darting painfully through my despair. They were infinitely more agonizing than any acceptance of fate, but I was powerless to quiet them. Surely they would search for me; surely they would chance upon that hole in the kitchen closet; surely God would lead them to it! Ah, if only I had told Mary! If only my vanity had not led me to trust only in myself!

“Now, you know the history of the robe, Janice,” began the woman after she had settled herself again at my side. “The treasure that has already caused three deaths, the acolyte's, and Robbie's, and—yours.

“I can't go into all the details of my adventures after I left Brane's apartments. I soon found that he had been married and had gone to America, and it was not long before I had his address. But it was very long, a lifetime, before I was free to come after my treasure. Other adventures intervened. Other people. I wrote some threatening letters, but Brane never answered them, and I was not foolish enough to ruin myself by trying to ruin him. I suppose he knew that and felt safe in ignoring my attempts at blackmail and intimidation.

“Well, I am triumphant now—to-night. How's that for a moral tale? What does the Bible say, 'the ungodly flourish like a green bay-tree'?

“But you will be interested to hear how I came to 'The Pines,' how I managed to hide myself here, how I rid myself of those three idiotic housekeepers and brought you down to take their place, how I introduced Maida and Jaffrey, how I worked the whole affair. I don't know how much you know. But I think there are several things that may surprise you. Now, listen; we have still several hours. You shall have the story—you alone, Janice—the true story of the Pine Cone Mystery. You are my father confessor, Janice. My secrets are as safe with you to-night as though I whispered them into a grave.”