Standing directly behind Leoncia, she did not realize that she had surprised the girl in a moment of high renunciation. All that she did know was that she saw Leoncia draw from her breast and gaze long at a tiny photograph. Over her shoulder the Queen made it out to be a snapshot of Francis, whereupon her mad jealousy raged anew. A poinard flashed to her hand from its sheath within the bosom of her dress. The quickness of this movement was sufficient to warn Leoncia, who tilted her parasol forward so as to look up at whatever person stood at her back. Too utterly dreary even to feel surprise, she greeted the wife of Francis Morgan as casually as if she had parted from her an hour before. Even the poinard failed to arouse in her curiosity or fear. Perhaps, had she displayed startlement and fear, the Queen might have driven the steel home to her. As it was, she could only cry out.
'You are a vile woman! A vile, vile woman!'
To which Leoncia merely shrugged her shoulders, and said:
'You would better keep your parasol between you and the sun.'
The Queen passed round in front of her, facing her and staring down at her w r ith woman's wrath compounded of such jealousy as to be speechless.
'Why?' Leoncia was the first to speak, after a long pause. 'Why am I a vile woman?'
'Because you are a thief,' the Queen flamed. 'Because you are a stealer of men, yourself married. Because you are unfaithful to your husband in heart, at least, since more than that has so far been impossible.'
'I have no husband,' Leoncia answered quietly.
'Husband to be, then I thought you were to be married the day after our departure.'
'I have no husband to be,' Leoncia continued with the same quietness.
So swiftly tense did the other woman become that Leoncia idly thought of her as a tigress.
'Henry Morgan!' the Queen cried.
'He is my brother.'
'A word which I have discovered is of wide meaning, Leoncia Solano. In New York there are worshippers at certain altars who call all men in the world 'brothers,' all women 'sisters.'
'His father was my father,' Leoncia explained with patient explicitness. 'His mother was my mother. We are full brother and sister.'
'And Francis?' the other queried, convinced, with sudden access of interest. 'Are you, too, his sister?'
Leoncia shook her head.
'Then you do love Francis!' the Queen charged, smarting with disappointment.
'You have him,' said Leoncia.
'No; for you have taken him from me.'
Leoncia slowly and sadly shook her head and sadly gazed out over the heat-shimmering surface of Chili qui Lagoon.
After a long lapse of silence, she said, wearily, 'Believe that. Believe anything.'
'I divined it in you from the first,' the Queen cried. 'You have a strange power over men. I am a woman not unbeautiful. Sine I have been out in the world I have watched the eyes of men looking at me. I know I am not all undesirable. Even have the wretched males of my Lost Valley with downcast eyes looked love at me. On dared more than look, and he died for me, or because of me, and was flung into the whirl of waters to his fate. And yet you, with this woman's power of yours, strangely exercise it over my Francis so that in my very arms he thinks of you. I know it. I know that even then he thinks of you!'
Her last words were the cry of a passion-stricken and breaking heart. And the next moment, though very little to Leoncia's surprise, being too hopelessly apathetic to b surprised at anything, the Queen dropped her knife in th sand and sank down, buried her face in her hands, and surrendered to the weakness of hysteric grief. Almost idly, and quit mechanically, Leoncia put her arm around her and comforted her. For many minutes this continued, when th Queen, growing more cairn, spo^e with sudden determination.
'I left Francis the moment I knew he loved you,' she said. 'I drove my knife into the photograph of you he keeps in his bedroom, and returned here to do the same to you in person. But I was wrong. It is not your fault, nor Francis'. It is my fault that I have failed to win his love. Not you, but I it is who must die. But first, I must go back to my valley and recover my treasure. In the temple called Wall Street, Francis is in great trouble. His fortune may be taken away from him, and he requires another fortune to save his fortune. I have that fortune, and there is no time to lose. Will you and yours help me? It is for Francis' sake.'
CHAPTER XXVII
So it came about that the Valley of the Lost Souls was invaded subterraneously from opposite directions by two parties of treasure-seekers. From one side, and quickly, came the Queen and Leoncia, Henry Morgan, and the Solanos. Far more slowly, although they had started long in advance, did Torres and the Jefe progress. The first attack on the mountain had proved the chief est obstacle. To blow open an entrance to the Maya caves had required more dynamite than they had originally brought, while the rock had proved stubborner than they expected. Further, when they had finally made a way, it had proved to be above the cave floor, so that more blasting had been required to drain off the water. And, having blasted their way in to the water-logged mummies of the conquistadores and to the Room of the Idols, they had to blast their way out again and on into the heart of the mountain. But first, ere they continued on, Torres looted the ruby eyes of Chia and the emerald eyes of Hzatzl.
Meanwhile, with scarcely any delays, the Queen and her party penetrated to the Valley through the mountain on the opposite side. Nor did they entirely duplicate the course of their earlier traverse. The Queen, through long gazing into her Mirror, knew every inch of the way. Where the underground river plunged through the passage and out into the bosom of the Gualaca River it was impossible to take in their boats. But, by assiduous search under her directions, they found the tiny mouth of a cave on the steep wall of the cliff, so shielded by a growth of mountain berries that only by knowing for what they sought could they have found it. By main strength, applied to the coils of rope which they had brought along, they hoisted their canoes up the cliff, portaged them on their shoulders through the winding passage, and launched them on the subterranean river itself where it ran so broadly and placidly between wide banks that they paddled easily against its slack current. At other times, where the river proved too swift, they lined the canoes up by towing from the bank; and wherever the river made a plunge through the solid tie-ribs of mountain, the Queen showed them the obviously hewn and patently ancient passages through which to portage their light crafts around. Here we leave the canoes,' the Queen directed at last, and the men began securely mooring them to the bank in the light of the flickering torches. 'It is but a short distance through the last passage. Then we will come to a small opening in the cliff, shielded by climbing vines and ferns, and look down upon the spot where my house once stood beside the whirl of waters. The ropes will be necessary in order to descend the cliff, but it is only about fifty feet.'
Henry, with an electric torch, led the way, the 'Queen beside him, while old Enrico and Leoncia brought up the rear, vigilant to see that no possible half-hearted peon or Indian boatman should slip back and run away. But when the party came to where the mouth of the passage ought to have been, there was no mouth. The passage ceased, being blocked off solidly from floor to roof by a debris of crumbled rocks that varied in size from paving stones to native houses.
'Who could have done this?' the Queen exclaimed angrily.
But Henry, after a cursory examination, reassured her.
'It's just a slide of rock,' he said, 'a superficial fault in the outer skin of the mountain that has slipped; and it won't take us long with our dynamite to remedy it. Lucky we fetched a supply along.'
But it did take long. For what was the remainder of the day and throughout the night they toiled. Large charges of explosive were not used because of Henry's fear of exciting a greater slip along the fault overhead. What dynamite was used was for the purpose of loosening up the rubble so that they could shift it back along the passage. At eight the following morning the charge was exploded that opened up to them the first glimmer of daylight ahead. After that they worked carefully, being apprehensive of jarring down fresh slides. At the last, they were baffled by a ten-ton block of rock in the very mouth of the passage. Through crevices on either side of it they could squeeze their arms into the blazing sunshine, yet the stone-block thwarted them. No leverage they applied could more than quiver it, and Henry decided on one final blast that would topple it out and down into the
