CHAPTER IX.

SHE STARED DEATH IN THE FACE.

The sound of a muffled shriek had, indeed, come faintly to Laurie’s ears from the direction of Lelia’s room, chilling the blood in his veins with fear and horror.

He ran frantically toward her door, followed fast by the portly doctor and the sinewy Crawford, who had the strength of a prize-fighter in his black fists.

Again a muffled shriek, then silence, as they tried to turn the handle of the unyielding door.

“We must burst it in!” breathed Laurie tensely, with the cold dew of excitement beading his high white brow.

All together, they hurled their strong bodies forward with determined will.

The lock could not stand their furious onslaught.

It yielded, the screws parted, the door crashed inward with such suddenness that all three tumbled in a heap upon the floor, gasping as if the breath had been knocked out of them.

But like a flash they sprang up again, and not a minute too soon.

For the sight that met their eyes was maddening to their manly hearts.

The masked burglars had succeeded but too easily in their designs.

Lelia’s maid having furnished them a clever description of the house, they found it, as she had told them, very carelessly guarded indeed, and had effected an easy entrance through an unbolted window.

The inmates of The Crags had always dwelt in careless security, having never been harassed by burglars.

The Willoughbys, when not entertaining guests, always kept their silver plate at the bank in the nearest town, and their money the same. Miss Willoughby always felt that these facts were too generally known for her to entertain fears of robbery.

She might have rested still in security, but that Lelia’s handsome diamonds had been coveted for some time by a band of thieves in the city of Charleston, where she lived.

Finding them too closely guarded there, they had followed, by her maid’s advice, into the country.

And the fates had smiled on them in the time chosen for the burglary.

The men were all gone to seek for the missing girl, and while Lelia sang in the music-room, and her aunt listened in the hall, the two men below, in the dining-room, were loading up a coarse sack with as much gold and silver plate as they thought they could conveniently get away with in safety.

This job completed, they dropped the sack out of the window, down into some thick shrubberies, to be recovered after they had possessed themselves of the case of jewels. They chuckled over the ease of their undertaking, and wasted some moments that were more precious to them than they knew in taking a cold lunch in the pantry.

Their impromptu feast over, they cautiously ascended the stairs, the echo of their footfalls drowned by the soft, rich carpets, as well as by the sound of Lelia’s singing.

“This is a regular cinch, Jack,” cried Larkin, as they penetrated the unlocked door of the guest-chamber, where obsequious servants had already lighted the lamps for Miss Ritchie’s retiring.

“What mystifies me is what has become o’ all the menfolk that belong here. Don’t seem to be no one in the house but them two wemmen. I swan, I believe that them men we passed in the light wagon, ’way down the road, must have come from here, don’t you think so?” whispered Jack, as they cautiously explored the adjoining dressing-room, where the maid had said the trunks would be stored.

Larkin agreed with him, and declared that they were in great luck, and must hurry up and get the jewels before Miss Ritchie came up to retire.

They proceeded to pick locks and go through the trunks, seeking the coveted case of jewels.

And in their careless sense of security, emboldened by their success in the dining-room, they forgot to lock the door of the outside apartment while they labored with a will overturning trunks of dainty clothing, until the floor was a litter of silk and lace and lingerie.

The very last trunk was reached before the treasure was found.

“Now let us be gone!” one muttered jubilantly; but, alas! at that very moment a disconcerting interruption occurred.

Lelia, in a fury at her lover and her aunt, bounced angrily into her room, banging and locking the door against all intruders.

Dismayed and angered by the intrusion, the burglars, with stifled oaths, hid themselves behind a tall wardrobe, swearing to each other in muffled oaths that they would like to wring her pretty neck.

“Two minutes more and we should have been safely outside! Hang the luck! We shall have to stay mewed up here in this hole till she gets to bed and to sleep, so’s we can steal out!”

“And if she comes in here we shall not dare breathe, for she would be sure to hear us, curse the luck!”

They resigned themselves to waiting, believing that, as the hour was late, she could not possibly remain up but a few minutes. Her pretty eyes would soon be closed in sleep.

But this was where they reckoned without their host.

Instead of retiring, Lelia raged up and down her room like the cyclone to which Miss Cyrilla had likened her, raving against her lover and Gipsy, and calling down all sorts of evil on the latter’s head.

“She’s a she-devil! Listen, how she hates everybody! Will she never have done raging? It’s half an hour now the vixen has been tearing up and down, and she ain’t tired out yet! If she keeps it up till daylight, where are we, I want to know? I propose that we rush in suddint on her, and wring her neck before she can holler; what say?” whispered Jack.

“Done!” And grasping the precious case, they bolted through the open door into the room.

Lelia, in her angry walk, had just turned, and she faced them with awful horror in her dilated blue eyes.

She saw the jewel-case in one man’s arms, she saw the brutal menace in their faces--stared death, as it were, in the face, all in one horrible moment.

A wild and piercing shriek rose to her blanched lips, but it was stifled in its birth by rough and brutal hands about the throat.

Again a stifled groan, but it was strangled half-born in her throat by that vicious clutch, and only the faintest echo reached Laurie’s ears.

But that was enough, coupled with Gipsy’s warnings.

Then opportunely the doctor and Crawford appeared on the scene, and responded to the call for assistance.

The door was crashed in, and they entered on the scene where the helpless Lelia was struggling in the grasp of the ruffian bent on murder.

Startled, surprised, taken at a disadvantage by superior numbers, the pair of villains made a bold fight for liberty, but the contest was short, and ended in their utter discomfiture. In ten minutes Laurie and Crawford were each sitting down on their man, while the doctor hustled around for ropes to tie them.