“Down here!” she said, taking a candle, lighting it and handing it to me. “Go—I will follow.”
I descended cautiously into the cold, dank place, discovering it to be a kind of unlighted cellar hewn out of the rock. A table, a chair, a lamp, and some provisions showed that preparation had been made for concealment there, but ere I had entirely explored the place my pretty fellow-fugitive rejoined me.
“This, I hope, is a place of safety,” she said. “They will not find us here. This is where Gustave lived before his flight.”
“Gustave?” I repeated, looking her straight in the face.
She dropped her eyes and blushed. Her silence told its own tale. The previous occupant of that rock chamber was her lover.
Her name was Luba—Luba Lazareff, she told me. But of herself she would tell me nothing further. Her reticence was curious, yet before long I recognised the reason of her refusal.
Candle in hand, I was examining the deepest recesses of the dark cavernous place, while she lit the lamp, when, to my surprise, I discovered at the farther end a workman’s bench upon which were various pieces of turned metal, pieces of tube of various sizes, and little phials of glass like those used for the tiny tabloids for subcutaneous injections.
I took one up to examine it, but at that instant she noticed me and screamed in terror.
“Ah! sir, for Heaven’s sake, put that down—very carefully. Touch nothing there, or we may both be blown to pieces! See!” she added in a low, intense voice of confession, as she dashed forward, “there are finished bombs there! Gustave could not carry them all away, so he left those with me.”