“I suppose you understand, Uncle Arthur,” she asked in a low cold voice, “that I will kill myself before I will let this happen?”
“My dear Virginia, you do not seem to understand the situation at all. You are absolutely in my power. You cannot kill yourself because I will not permit it. I will not give you the chance. You will do exactly as I say.”
“_Not yet, Ward! First, you’ll settle with me!_”
Stanley Ross stood in the doorway. But it was not the Stanley Ross, urbane, bored, carefree, who, a few days before, had whimsically sought adventure up an unknown canon trail. He had found adventure now, and it had used him roughly. His face and hands were grimy. His clothes were dirty and torn. One sleeve had been almost rent from his shoulder. His hair was riotously disheveled and clotted with blood. Down one side of his face extended a great splash of dirty dried blood.
In his right hand was an ugly-looking automatic, and in his face and eyes was a look of savage fury.
At the sound of Ross’s voice, Ward whirled and whipped out a gun. But he was too late, for Ross, with a steadiness and coldness belied by the savagery of his face and figure, had fired. A look of unutterable amazement overspread the face of Arthur Ward. He wavered on his feet for a moment, and then, when a spot of red began to widen on his shirt front, he toppled backward, lifeless.
Almost at the same instant a hatchet hurtled through the room and buried its blade deep in the wall beside Larson Beebe, missing his head by the merest fraction of an inch. Wong was going into action. Beebe slid forward from his seat and ducked to temporary safety behind the table.
Ward had not had time to aim, but he had instinctively pulled the trigger. The bullet caught Ross on the head and cut a long shallow furrow just above his left temple. The wound itself was not serious, but for a moment it blinded Ross. That moment was fatal, for as he roused himself from the shock he knew that he had forgotten Poole.
Instantly Ross whirled to face the other doorway, but was too late. The heavy bullet spun him half around. For an instant he fought to retain his balance. Then he pitched forward onto the floor.
Painfully, with almost a superhuman effort, Ross raised himself with one hand and deliberately shot Poole through the chest.
Then, mercifully, consciousness was blotted out.
_CHAPTER NINE_
VIRGINIA EXPLAINS
When Ross returned to consciousness it was to a blurred, feverish, pain-wracked world.
He did not know where he was or what had happened. He only knew that his head was bandaged and splitting with pain; that his shoulder was stiff and sore, incapable of being moved even the fraction of an inch, and that it pained with a dull, throbbing hurt; that his eyes burned and blurred; and that his entire body burned with ten thousand fires.
Of one thing more was Ross conscious. That was the girl. When she saw that Ross had temporarily come out of the fog she hurried to his side and answered the unasked question on his lips by holding a cup of cold water to them. She seemed to have been waiting for ages to do just that.
Ross drank gratefully, but when he would have questioned her she laid her finger across his lips and said;
“_Sh-h-h-ush!_ Not now. We’ll talk when you feel better. Just now you need sleep more than anything else.”
And Stanley Ross obeyed. In an instant he was asleep, a wild, feverish sleep that brought no rest.
There followed days of half consciousness, half nightmare; days when Ross neither knew nor cared what happened, when wild delirium alternated with painful reality.
He was far too ill to make any inquiries about anything that had happened. In fact, he was only conscious of the fact that whenever the fog lifted the girl always seemed to be present—a ministering angel who brought cooling draughts, and soothing applications for his head and shoulders.
Finally there came a day when Ross awoke to a sane world. The fever fog had departed from his brain. His head no longer throbbed and beat like a thousand devils. His shoulder was sore and stiff, but it no longer was filled with maddening pain. He was weak, very weak, but the world was once more interesting and he was acutely aware of a most prodigious appetite.
Ross was aware that he was in the room to which he had been conducted by Garfin on the night of the strange dinner. Beyond that, he was not interested. He was aware that the girl was still acting as his nurse.
At meal time the Chinese, Wong, came in with a tray. He was still too weak to care as to the whereabouts of the others, or what had happened on the night of the fight.
He did learn that the girl’s name was Virginia Carver, but that was all.
In less than a week he was sitting out on the long veranda every afternoon. With returning strength came returning curiosity. He wanted to know the story of this strange habitation in the desert and to learn just what had happened on the night Wong had aided him to escape.
Several times he broached the subject to the girl, but each time she put him off with the statement that he was not yet strong enough to talk. The excuse was obviously becoming threadbare, however, as his health improved.
One afternoon, while Ross was sitting on the veranda, the girl came out and took a seat opposite him. It was patent that the time for explanations had come.
“I suppose, Mr. Ross,” began Virginia Carver, “that you have been wondering just what this whole thing is about, and you certainly are entitled to an explanation. I don’t know how I am ever going to thank you for what you have done for me. You were very brave.”
“Well, suppose you forget about the thanks, Miss Carver,” said Ross, visibly embarrassed. “I _would_ like to know all about this queer affair, though. I thought Arabian Nights were ancient history, but I’m about ready to believe anything.”
“In order for you to understand I’ll have to take you back about seven years,” explained the girl. “At that time my uncle, Arthur Ward, was one of the biggest operators in Wall Street. All his life he has been a very peculiar man; eccentric; always doing queer things for which there seemed no explanation, and never taking any one into his confidence.
“In the Street he was known as a plunger. He made a great deal of money. Just how much I have no idea beyond the fact that he was always very generous with my mother, his sister. But at one time he must have been very wealthy indeed.
“Seven years ago it seems that he plunged too heavily and got caught. His fortune was practically wiped out. When everything was settled up he was still a wealthy man—that is, he was probably worth a half million dollars—but the great bulk of his fortune was gone.
“He fought fiercely to keep from going under. There were days and nights at a time when I don’t think he slept at all. He was like a wild man, but the combination against him was too great and he went under.
“At first we thought he was going to lose his mind. For weeks he acted very queer. Finally he seemed to get a hold on himself and he appeared rational.
“He settled up his business, and then suddenly disappeared. He left no word where he was going—just dropped out of sight. That was seven years ago, and for two years we heard nothing from him. Five years ago I got a letter from him asking me to visit him here. I came and found things just about as you see them now.
“He seemed perfectly rational and contented. Of course, he was queer and erratic, but he had always been that. He seemed to have forgotten Wall Street entirely and spent most of his time making a collection of the accoutrements of horse and man of the old-time West. I doubt if there is a finer collection in existence.
“He did a lot of entertaining, too, for his old friends, inviting them out for long visits. Here his eccentricity cropped out, for he insisted on going to great lengths to have everything just as it would be in New York. There must be fifteen dress suits in the house, and he always asked every one to dress for dinner. He imported wines and foods. Wong has been with him ever since he has been here and he is an excellent cook.
“I came out every year. He was always very kind to me and has made every effort to entertain me. I thought he acted a little more queer each year, and I often wondered if he was not a little unbalanced mentally.
“When I came out this year there was a great change. I saw at once that he was quite mad. He imagined that he was being persecuted by the Warings, and kept Poole and Garfin, New York gunmen, to protect him. The Warings were the people who engineered his defeat in Wall Street, and Uncle Arthur hated them intensely. He not only imagined they were persecuting him, but he also imagined that the younger Waring, whom I have never seen, was trying to marry me. This seemed to be an obsession with him.
“When I got here I found that Larson Beebe was Uncle Arthur’s guest. I had met Mr. Beebe in New York several times, and I detested him. I had good reason to. He—well, I have always despised him.
“Just what his hold or influence on Uncle Arthur was I haven’t the slightest idea, but I had hardly arrived before Uncle Arthur began to insist that I marry him.