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!”

“On the night when the two men completed their hellish invention, I watched through the shutters unseen,” she cried. “I saw Nenci explain how this deadly thing was charged, and the mode in which it was set. See!” In an instant all had grouped round her, as, turning the bust upside down, she eagerly examined it beneath the shaded lamp. The scratch running across the malachite base and up the outer edge of the removable portion was, she saw, contiguous to a mark higher up. Nenci had turned the circular base until the ends of the almost imperceptible line had joined.

Another instant and nothing could save them.

With trembling hands Gemma grasped it, as Nenci had done on the night when she had watched, and with a quick wrench tried to turn it back.

It would not move!

Next second, however, she twisted it in the opposite direction. As she did so there was a harsh grating sound, as of steel cutting into stone, a crack, as though some strong spring had snapped; and then all knew that the mechanism of the devilish invention had been disordered, and the frightful catastrophe thereby averted.

She bent down, opening Nenci’s bag, and took therefrom a second bust, exclaiming—

“He tricked us cleverly. Fortunately, however, I detected the difference in the markings of that green stone, or ere this we might each one of us have been dead.” Then, placing the two busts side by side, she pointed out the difference in the vein of the malachite which had attracted her attention, and thus caused her to make the astounding declaration which had held them petrified.

“You’ve saved us!” the Gobbo cried, addressing her.

“These men must not escape,” Gemma cried determinedly. “They shall not! Our lives have been endangered by their villainous treachery, and they shall not evade punishment.”