“What does it matter? Confound it! you’ve won; so let me tell my story. I must have lost my senses when I saw you and Helen leaving the glacier with two strange guides. I forgot all else in my rage. I stood there, frozen, bewitched. Stampa was watching me all the time, and the instant I turned to revile him he threw me off my balance with a thrust of his ax. ‘Now you are going to die, Marcus Bauer!’ he said, grinning at me with a lunatic’s joy. He even gloated over the unexpected injury I received in falling. My groans and cries were so pleasing to him that he did not cut the rope at once as he meant to do, but kept me dangling there, listening to his reproaches. Then the stones fell, and pinned him to the ledge; but not one touched me, and I hauled myself up, broken leg and all, till I crawled on to the big rock that rested on his body. You found me there, eh?”
“Yes.”
“Well, I wish you luck. I meant to snatch Helen from you, even at the twelfth hour; but Stampa over-reached me. That mock marriage of his contriving had more power than I counted on. Curse it! how these crushed bones are beginning to ache! Give me some brandy. I want to drink Helen’s health, and my own, and yours, damn you! See that you treat her well and make her life happy! She is worthy of all your love, and I suppose she loves you, whereas I might have striven for years to win her affection and then failed in the end.”
Late that night Spencer arrived at the Maloja. Helen was waiting for him, as he had telephoned the hour he might be expected. Rumor had brought the news of Stampa’s death and Bower’s accident. Then she understood why her lover had sent her away so quickly. She was troubled all day, blaming herself as the unconscious cause of so much misery. Spencer saw that the full truth alone would dispel her self reproach. So he told her everything, even showing her Millicent’s letter and a telegram received from Mackenzie, in which the editor of “The Firefly” put it quite plainly that the proprietor of the magazine had forbidden him (Mackenzie) from taking any steps whatever with regard to Helen’s return to England without definite instructions.
The more she learned of the amazing web of intrigue and misunderstanding that surrounded her movements since she left the Embankment Hotel after that memorable luncheon with Millicent, the less inclined she was to deny Spencer’s theory that Fate had brought them together.
“I cleared out of Colorado as though a tarantula had bitten me,” he said. “I traveled five thousand miles to London, saw you, fooled myself into the belief that I was intended by Providence to play the part of a heavy uncle, and kept up that notion during another thousand-mile trip to this delightful country. Then you began to reach out for me, Helen——”
“I did nothing of the kind!” she protested.
“Oh, yes, you did,—just grabbed me good and hard,—and when Bower showed up I stacked my chips on the table and sat down to the game. What am I talking about? I don’t know. Kiss me good night, sweetheart, and don’t you give a red cent who’s looking. For once in a way, I don’t mind admitting that I’m tired—all in. I could sleep on a row of porcupines.”