And with that, he waved a big knotted club, one of Stephen’s possessions, around his head, and glared ferociously.
“Come on, boys,” called Stephen. “We haven’t a moment to lose. The man will be well away if we don’t hurry. We are going to ride in twos and divide the place in sections.”
In another ten minutes a company of horsemen rode off in the moonlight, two by two, while the frightened maid-servants locked and barred the house doors and windows.
José had begged to be allowed to go along, but the major had silenced him by saying that Miss Sallie and the girls needed a protector, and that under the circumstances it was better for him to stay at home and look after them. Even the old major was rather enjoying the zest of a man-hunt, and his eyes flashed with a new fire under his grizzled eyebrows.
But nothing happened and the assassin remained at large. The hunters scoured the country, searched the forest on the outskirts of the Ten Eyck estate, and woke the sleeping Gypsies to demand what they knew. The Gypsies knew nothing, and at midnight the horsemen returned.
The house was silent. Everyone had gone to bed except José, who sat in the library listening for every sound that creaked through the old place. He met Major Ten Eyck and the boys at the front door, holding a candle high and peering anxiously into the dark to see what quarry they had brought home.
And, when he saw they had no prisoner bound to the horse with the ropes that the major had ordered his man to take along, a look of strange relief came into the Spaniard’s face. He breathed a deep sigh, smiled as he thanked them, said good-night and went up the broad stairway with the same smile still clinging to his lips.
In the meantime Bab was stretched out beside the sleeping Ruth, wide awake, going over the events of that tumultuous day.
She felt that these events had no connection with each other, and yet deep down in her inner consciousness she was searching for the link that bound all the strange happenings together. She was not quite sure now whether she had seen the face in the library or not. She had been so tired and hot. It might, after all, have been a dream. But the footsteps in the dust on the attic floor, coming from the wall, what of them?
And last, though most strange and mysterious of all, the two daggers? José had been saved just in time from the stigma of suspicion by the appearance of the other dagger, for, in the moment she had seen the two, Bab had realized they were absolutely alike.