"If they seize me," she thought. "If it's d'Estreicher's intention to kidnap me without more ado, there's nothing to be done. Before I could be rescued, they would carry me off to their underground lair, and from there I don't know where!"
And why should it be otherwise? Master of the medal and of Dorothy, the ruffian had only to fly.
On the instant she saw all the faults of her plan. In order to compel d'Estreicher to risk a sortie that she might capture him during that sortie, she had invented a too subtle ruse, which actual developments of Fortune's spite might turn to her undoing. A conflict which turns on the number of seconds gained or lost is extremely doubtful.
She went quickly into the house and pushed the disc under a heap of discarded things in a small lumber-room. The necessary hunt for it would delay for a while the enemy's flight. But when she came back to go out of the house, d'Estreicher, grimacing ironically behind his spectacles and under his thick beard, stood on the threshold of the front door.
Dorothy never carried a revolver. All her life she never cared to trust to anything but her courage and intelligence. She regretted it at this horrible moment when she found herself face to face with the man who had murdered her father. Her first act would have been to blow out his brains.
Divining her vengeful thought, he seized her arm quickly and twisted it, as he had twisted the arm of old Juliet Assire. Then bending over her, he snapped:
"Where have you put it?... Be quick!"
She did not even dream of resisting, so acute was the pain, and took him to the little room, and pointed to the heap. He found the disc at once, weighed it in his hand, examining it with an air of immense satisfaction and said:
"That's all right. Victory at last! Twenty years of struggle come to an end. And over and above what I bargained for, you, Dorothy—the most magnificent and desirable of rewards."
He ran his hand over her frock to make sure that she was not armed, then seized her round the body, and with a strength which no one would have believed him to possess, swung her over his shoulder on to his back.