A discordant cry echoed through the chamber: “The skull! My God, let me pass!”—and Luvaine, dashing aside the restraining arm, bounded to the furthermost of the stone blocks and snatched something into his hands. He had no respect, no sympathy, no decency even, in the covetous lust of his soul. Perhaps if he had had, the Fates had vouchsafed a kindlier turn to his fortunes.
Tuke and Blythewood would not echo his jubilance—would hardly give him their notice, indeed. To them a solemner tragedy appealed—a mystery far profounder than that of humanity’s morbid attraction to coloured pebbles. It was only when a second horrible cry broke from him that they looked round, startled.
He was standing with the skull held out before him in one hand. His face was ghastly and contorted; his eyes, in the marionette play of light and shadow, were dancing devils of fury.
“It is gone!” he shrieked—“the stone is gone!”
Tuke’s very gorge rose. The nerves of his jaw seemed to click rigid.
“Dennis,” he said, with a sternness that was only for that other—“forbear your grief a little, my good fellow. For the sake of common decency let us resolve this matter now and at once.”
He crossed to Luvaine.
“Well, sir,” he said—“you say the stone is gone?”
For answer the other held him out the skull. He was so lost in the terror of loss that he would have scarcely resented a blow.
Tuke took the ugly relic in his hand, and offered it to his man’s inspection.