Escobeda stopped short in his vituperation.
"Dead? He was afraid, then! He killed her." Escobeda laughed cruelly. "If I have lost her, so has he."
"Ay, ay, they have flown away, flown to heaven, the Señores. The good God cares for his own. I wonder now who cares for the Señor Escobeda!"
With the scream of a wild beast he flew at her, and she, fearing positive injury, sprang aside. Escobeda's spur caught in the rug and tore it from its place on the floor. He stumbled and fell, pulling the green and white carpet after him. Concealment was no longer possible; the trap-door was laid bare. With a fiendish cry of delight he flew at the ring in the sunken door.
"To hell! to hell!" he shouted. "That is where they have gone; not to heaven, but to hell."
Escobeda had heard rumours all his life of the secret passage to the sea—the passage which had never been located by the curious. At last the mystery was solved. He raised the door, and without a word to Guillermina, plunged into the black depths. The absence of a light was lost sight of by him in his unreasoning rage. Almost before his fingers had disappeared from view, Guillermina had lowered the trap-door into its place in the most gentle manner.
If one is performing a good action, it is best to make as little noise about it as possible. As she fitted the great iron bar across the opening, there came a knocking upon the under side of the iron square.
"Give me a light! A light! you she-devil! A light, I say."
Guillermina went softly to the door of the counting-house and closed it to prevent intrusion. She could hear Escobeda's followers running riotously all over the casa. Her time would be short, that she knew. She knelt down on the floor and put her lips close to the crack in the trap-door.