Arturo, I am without Stefano.’

His sly voice sounded preternaturally sly in the absolute darkness, but even through that impenetrable veil I knew it for a sham. I had laid hold of the hand-rail. It shook violently in my hand; he also was holding it where he stood. And these suppressed tremors, or rather their detection in this way, struck a strange chill to my heart, just as I was beginning to pluck it up.

‘It is lucky for Stefano,’ said I, grim as death.

‘Ah, but you must not be too ’ard on ’im,’ remonstrated the Count. ‘You have stole his girl, he speak with me about it, and I wish to speak with you. It is very audashuss, Arturo, very audashuss! Perhaps you are even going to meet her now, eh?’

I told him straight that I was.

‘Then there is no ’urry, for she is not there.’

‘You didn’t see her in the cave?’ I cried, too delighted at the thought to keep it to myself.

‘I had no such fortune,’ the old devil said.

‘She is there, all the same.’

‘I only wish I ’ad known.’

‘And I’ve kept her long enough!’

In fact I threw this over my shoulder as I turned and went running down.

‘I ’ope you will find her!’ his malicious voice came croaking after me. ‘I ’ope you will—I ’ope so.’

‘And find her I did.’

Raffles had been on his feet some time, unable to sit still or to stand, moving excitedly about the room. But now he stood still enough, his elbows on the cast-iron mantelpiece, his head between his hands.

‘Dead?’ I whispered.

And he nodded to the wall.

‘There was not a sound in the cave. There was no answer to my voice. Then I went in, and my foot touched hers, and it was colder than the rock ... Bunny, they had stabbed her to the heart. She had fought them, and they had stabbed 

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