“Look! Look! This is not the bust he showed us at first, but another! This one is charged! Fly quickly—all of you! In another instant this house will be in a mass of ruins, and we shall all be blown to atoms! This is Nenci’s diabolical vengeance!”
With one accord they sprang from their chairs and rushed towards the door. Tristram was the first to gain it, turned the handle.
“God! It’s locked!” he shrieked.
Nenci, the sinister-faced man who, with his two infamous companions, had secured them in that room with the frightful engine of destruction in their midst, had ingeniously escaped. Speechless, with faces blanched, they exchanged quick apprehensive glances of terror. Those moments were full of terrible suspense. All knew they they were doomed, and appalled, rooted to the spot by unspeakable terror, none dared to move a muscle or touch that exquisite bust upon the table. Each second ticked out clearly by the Sèvres clock upon the mantelshelf brought them nearer to an untimely and frightful end; nearer to that fatal moment when the tiny glass tube must be shattered by the internal mechanism, and thus cause an explosion which would in an instant launch them into eternity.
Chapter Twenty Nine.
Entrapped.
As all drew back aghast and terrified from the little face of carved stone, Gemma, who had tried the door only to discover the truth of Tristram’s appalling assertion, dashed instantly back to the table, and, regardless of the imminent risk she ran, took the small image in her hands.
“No, no!” they cried with one voice, haunted by the fear that at any second it might explode and blow them out of all recognition. “Don’t touch it! don’t touch it!”