"But now to the next step in our progress. From the opposite end of this vault to that by which you entered there is a subway to the condemned cell. Many a time and oft has this been useful to me before, for you need not plume yourself the first that has self-sacrificed upon the altar of his love. Parent or child—lover or spouse—have employed me as middleman over and over again. My memory teems triumphant with case after case where the burners, unknowingly have burnt but the shadow of a witch. And so shall it be again. I take the golem with me and rejoin you with your prize."
He touched a spring in the opposite wall which threw open the indicated door. The bottom of a flight of steps appeared, the pendant of that which the sailor had descended. Aquelarre took the apparently bewildered golem by the hand and with her disappeared. The door closed with a vicious snap. The sailor was left alone in a chamber hermetically sealed and Heaven knows how far beneath the foundation of the tavern of the Four Cross Roads. There were none of mortal kind around save bones of unshriven suicides who dreamed of judgment and woke up shrieking that they made the blood of youth run cold to hear them. These were his brothers in exile. He was fain to shout aloud, that corner to re-echoing corner of the vault might make him colloquy. But was this jangled terror his that they groaned into his ears? Was this the note to which the lung of storm gave precedence in happier days upon the sea? How long this weird conversation lasted the sailor never knew. At length his straining ear caught the footfall which he had dared so much to hear again. To snatch Lisalda into his arms as she entered, to feel that she yielded to his embrace was breath and blood to our hero. But the devil's attorney touched him on the shoulder. He pointed sternly to the other door that led again to the inn. In Indian file (there was room for but one on a step) all three commenced the ascent. How quickly it sped compared with that well remembered descent. But the sailor found time to hide in his waistband the Cabalist's branded hand. When they reached their wonted level Aquelarre closed the trap, and throwing open the door of the street disclosed (he did not do things by halves) a fully caparisoned horse waiting outside. His whole face brightened into a smile of supreme content with himself and (for the nonce) all the world. His work was done. He held out his hand for the payment. The sailor did not smile. He took the silver ring ostentatiously from his little finger and placed it upon that of the devil's attorney. The face of Aquelarre underwent a very sudden change.
"Gates and gulfs of Hell! Do you realise with whom it is you jest?"
"Jest do you say? It is sober, serious, earnest."
"What the devil's name! You pledged me the ring you wear on your finger."
"I pledged it to you and I have passed it you—the only ring I ever wore—but if you refer to the Ring of the demon, that has never left the dead man's hand since for its sake you left him dead."
Before Aquelarre could recover from his stupefaction at this thunderbolt, Ataurresagasti swept Lisalda into the crupper and sprang to the saddle in front of her. And then loose rein and bloody heel, they dashed down one of the cross roads from which the tavern derived its name. Ride, ride, ride. Dark though the way and cold the wind, Ataurresagasti rolls a name upon his tongue that lights the path and warms the ambient air. Lisalda! Lisalda! Lisalda! Shock snowy polls of Pyrenean hills start up behind the haze. The lights of Behobia star the drift. Its cobbles fly to sparks beneath the horse's hoofs. The river cuts athwart the highway; the bridge is reached. Another stride and the fleur de lys is left behind for good. A customs officer leaps out of his box and seizes the horse's head; he is dragged several yards along the track. A torrent of imprecations in Basque, French and Spanish. Ataurresagasti pulls his mount back on to its haunches. The officer is ultimately convinced that he is no smuggler, and relinquishes somewhat charily his prey; Ataurresagasti winds gently along the bank. When beyond the range of pry or spy he dismounted and swung Lisalda to the ground. Once in his arms he did not readily let her go but showered kiss after kiss. The horse unheeded proceeded to explore on his own account and soon was lost to sight. Ataurresagasti showered kiss after kiss upon her wounded arm, her neck, her mouth, her eyes, her brow; but what is this—his lips are blistered in contact with the hair that shades that brow; he pushes the hair aside. A name in fiery angelical characters is flaring there. Horror of horrors, 'tis the golem! In his far off tavern Aquelarre is laughing in his sleeve. Ataurresagasti stands aghast. The creature regards him with puzzled eyes. She does not understand this sudden change; her mouth smiles and the first word she has ever uttered crosses her lips. It is her own name picked up, parrot-like from the iteration of the sailor. It had a different effect from what the poor thing expected.
"Lisalda!"
His cry of agony jarred her dulcet note. Every cord of his body was strung in an instant to one thought. To destroy this soulless creature—to annihilate—to erase her—to have her from God's earth. He pounced upon her. But the poor pretty monster seemed to feel by instinct that this was another guess embrace from the first ardent one. And instinctively she wrestled with him. It was an awful unheard-of bout. Not a syllable was spoken, nor a cry. The blood now streamed like rain from her wounded arm. They slipped in the puddling soil. And Ataurresagasti could not get rid of the horrible idea that it was, after all, the real Lisalda that he was wiping out of life. Bit by bit, and one by one he obliterated the cursed characters. And bit by bit as the execution proceeded a horrible change came over her. Her limbs grew lean and spidery that she twisted about him. Her eyes grew dull and fishy. Her hair fell out by handfuls. She was dying letter meal. At length he forced her to his feet still clinging to his knees. The last figure of the angelical name disappeared beneath his thumb. Before him there lay no longer She but It. No longer a Lisalda, but a battered waxen doll with two pebbles and a herring-bone clapped on to one side of its head to distinguish front from back. Laughable—yes, perhaps—but Ataurresagasti did not laugh. He fell upon his face and wept. Something like an hour passed before he rose. Then drawing his hanger, and selecting the greenest spot, he proceeded to dig a grave. This he lined with masses of such wild flowers as he could find, and then reverently disposed the golem upon them. He shovelled back the earth upon the body, as he could not help but call it. He stamped it down obliterating all traces of his handiwork. He had said no prayer, but prayers crowded into his mind. He seemed in his tangled consciousness to have buried the real Lisalda, and with her all his love. He drew towards the river and stared into its inscrutable depths, turning over in his mind the pro and con as touching suicide. But after mature deliberation he decided, in preference, to return to that officer at Behobia, and give himself up for wife murder. He took a gloomy pleasure in this idea, and might even have carried it through. But suddenly a mocking peal of laughter—fiendish laughter—struck, as he thought, familiarly on his ears. He rubbed his eyes and looked across the river. On the French side of the boundary stream, there stood facing him the devil's attorney, hand in hand with what the now crazed sailor took for a golem. The existence in the world of a real Lisalda never occurred to his wandering wits. Aquelarre knew full well what had transpired. The sight of the discomfiture of his rival seemed balsam to his wounded self-esteem. Nor did he evidently as yet despair of making all things square. He addressed Ataurresagasti at first with real or assumed jocularity.
"Hola? master gaff topsail, and have you found the truth of what I once told you, that two can play in a game of brag? Come, we are surely quits by this time. Let bygones be bygones, and let us adjust our contra accounts. You hold on your side what is of value to me, and I on my side what is of value to you. Exchange is no robbery. Cast me the Ring across the stream, and Lisalda shall join you at Behobia."