“Rubber!” grinned Rattleton. “Sit up straight, and perhaps one will fall in your plate.”
“What is it?” grunted Bruce. “Sounded like a piece of money. Are they beginning to throw money at us?”
“If so, with his usual luck, Merry gets the first piece,” said Harry.
As for Frank, he saw what had fallen on his plate, and lay square in the middle of the white surface. It was a blood-red star!
At it Frank stared for a moment, and then he leaped to his feet, and looked around, to see from whence it came. First, he looked up at the ceiling, but it did not seem possible it had fallen from there. Then he looked in other directions. At the nearest table sat two old men, who were eating busily, and talking quite as busily as they ate. They seemed utterly absorbed in their own affairs, and both were laughing at a story one of them had lately told. The other people in the place were eating and talking in a similar manner, and not one seemed to be noticing the four American lads at the table in the corner.
Frank sat down, and his face was very pale. He stared at the red symbol of death that lay on his plate, and he thought how the terrible sign had come to the doomed Duke of Benoit du Sault. He doubted not for an instant that the star had been intended for him.
Ten days of life had been given to him, and then, if he were not beyond the borders of France—death! And was it certain that death could be escaped by fleeing from the soil of France?
About the mystery there was something to chill the stoutest heart, and it was not strange that Frank Merriwell turned pale when he saw that crimson star lying on his white plate. It would have been different if there had been any way to fight the horrible doom that seemed to creep with absolute certainty upon every person who received the blood-red star.
It seemed, however, that the only resort a person had, on receiving the star, was to fly from France without delay—to get as far from the terrible Black Brothers as possible. On the star were the words, “Ten days,” and a drawing of the guillotine.
Diamond reached to take it from Merry’s plate, but Merry caught him by the wrist, saying in a strained voice: