Chapter XXIX. Entrapped.

Otago Witness, Issue 2319, 11 August 1898, Page 50

Chapter XXIX. Entrapped.

'As all drew back aghast and terrified f>-om the little face of carved stone, Gemmu who had tried the door only to discovei the truth of T.ristram's appalling assertion, dashed instantly back to the table, and, regardless of the imminent risk she ran, look the small image in her hands. " No ! No !" they cried with one voice, liaunted by the fear that any second it might explode and blow them out of all recognition. " Don't touch it ! Don't touch it ! "

" On the night when the two men completed their hellish invention 1 watched through the shutters unseen," she cried. I saw Nenci explain how this deadly r.hmg was charged, and the mode in which it •was set. See ! " In an instant .ill had grouped around her, as turning the bust upside down, she eagerly examined it beneath the shaded lamp. The scratch running across the malachite base and up the imter edge of the removable portion was, she saw, contiguous to a mark higher up. Nenci Lad turned the circular base until the ends of the almost imperceptible line had joined. Another instant and nothing could save them.

With trembling hands Gemma grasped it as Nenci had done on the night when she had watched, and with a quick wrench tried '<io turn it back.

It would not move.

Next second, however, she twisted it in the opposite direction. As she did so there was a harsh grating sound as of steel cutting into stone, a crack, as though some strong spring had snapped, and then all knew that the mechanism of the devilish invention had been disordered and that the frightful catastroohe was thereby averted. She bent down, opened Nona's bag, and took therefrom a second bust, exclaiming :

"He tricked us cleverly. Fortunately, however, I detected the difference in the markings of (hat green stone, or ere this we might each of us have been dead." Then placing the two busts side by side, she pointed out the difference in the vein of the Jnalachite which had attracted her attention. :ipd thus caused her to make the a*f," ('it.-, declaration which had held them petrified. " You've saved us," the Gobbo cried, addressing her. " Tlsnj.o men must not escape." Gemma cried, determinedly. " They shall not Our lives have been endangered by their villainous treachery, and they shall not evade punishment." " ' « (To be concluded.^