"What does all this mean?" said French, looking around from one to the other with a dazed face.
Before they could answer, a voice clear and sonorous drew their eyes across the ravine towards Rosenblatt's cabin. At a little distance from the cabin they could distinguish the figure of a man outlined in the lurid light of the leaping flames. He was speaking to Rosenblatt, whose head could be seen thrust far out of the window.
"Who is that man?" cried the Sergeant.
"Mother of God!" said old Portnoff in a low voice. "It is Malkarski. Listen."
"Rosenblatt," cried the old man in the Russian tongue, "I have something to say to you. Those bags of gunpowder, that dynamite with which you were to destroy two innocent men, are now piled under your cabin, and this train at my feet will fire them."
With a shriek Rosenblatt disappeared, and they could hear him battering at the door. Old Malkarski laughed a wild, unearthly laugh.
"Rosenblatt," he cried again, "the door is securely fastened! Three stout locks will hold it closed."
The wretched man thrust his head far out of the window, shrieking, "Help! Help! Murder! Help!"
"Listen, you dog!" cried Malkarski, his voice ringing down through the ravine, "your doom has come at last. All your crimes, your treacheries, your bloody cruelties are now to be visited upon you. Ha! scream! pray! but no power in earth can save you. Aha! for this joy I have waited long! See, I now light this train. In one moment you will be in hell."
He deliberately struck a match. A slight puff of wind blew it out. Once more he struck a match. A cry broke forth from Kalman.