He caught himself sharply. What fantastic folly was this? The whole theory was based upon a girl's romantic version of a fall from a foolish, mechanical contrivance—heaven knows how inefficiently constructed—and a fancied resemblance to a face seen only twice before, each time in a dim light, and apparently half eclipsed by a disguise.
He breathed more freely. He had never before had to reproach himself with morbidness. The whole idea was doubtless nonsensical. Even if it had any foundation in fact, the party outside—himself and the two girls—would be a check on treachery of any magnitude. The guide had not means at hand for such wholesale murder as the destruction of the two young men would necessitate; evidently he was not armed, or he would not have flinched, crestfallen and dismayed, when the muscular Frank Laniston had joined the manager. The report of their disappearance, and a search party from the hotel and the neighbourhood might rescue them, if abandoned to the tortuous depths of darkness, or ascertain their fate, if treacherously misled into abysses and over precipices. Despite his careful reasoning of a moment before, he had come back to this horrible possibility.
Suddenly he sprang to his feet. Frank Laniston, the lantern in his hand, his blond hair damp and limp over his forehead, his teeth chattering with cold, his shoulders shrugging with shivers, plunged out of the entrance with the wild cry:
"Come on! Hurry up! Finest thing yet! Great! Perfect palace of wonders! Don't waste a minute!"
He caught Lucia by the wrist, and she shivered at the touch of his cold hand, as he turned, and together they dashed toward the entrance he had just quitted.
"Stop, Laniston, I want to tell you something," exclaimed Jardine insistently.
"Some other day," called back Frank, between his chill teeth.
"But I must—I will speak to you!" began Jardine.
"I have left that man and Lloyd in the dark, waiting. The mountaineer didn't want me to take the light—said it burns faster in motion. He wouldn't stay alone—said he's afraid of harnts—ha! ha! ha! And we couldn't make him come back, said it's bad luck to turn back. So really I can't stop to listen to you. I can't leave them there in that awful blackness longer than I am obliged to. If you are coming—come on! Follow the lantern!"
"I insist—I insist," cried Jardine, advancing with long strides in their wake over the rocky ground, finding it impossible to overtake them. "I insist that you do not take Miss Laniston!"