_ CHAPTER XII. A BURNING TRAP
For some moments Dyke Darrel stared at the face in the window without moving. How came Harper Elliston in the woods at Black Hollow, when he ought to have been in Chicago, according to his expressed intentions of the previous day?
With a sudden, wild scream the crazed Sibyl darted across the floor, and thrust her hands against the window with such violence as to burst the glass, cutting her hands severely in the operation.
"Hubert! Hubert! come at last!" The girl staggered back and sank in a paroxysm to the floor.
It was indeed a startling affair, yet Dyke Darrel did not lose his presence of mind. He hurried to the door and opened it, springing outside quickly.
"Elliston, I want you."
Dyke Darrel stood by the broken window now, but the man he had expected to find was not there. The apparition had vanished as though fleeing into the upper air.
Again the detective called the name of his friend, but without receiving a reply.
Here was a mystery indeed.
Had that face at the window been an optical delusion, after all?
Dyke Darrel was not superstitious, yet in the present case a queer feeling oppressed him, and an awful misgiving entered his mind.
"I cannot believe that the face at the window was other than that of Elliston's; and yet she called him Hubert. It must be that there is a mistake somewhere, and it seems to me that the mad girl is more apt to be deceived than I."
Once more Dyke Darrel returned to the house.
Sibyl Osborne lay in a dead faint on the floor. The detective began chafing her hands at once, and loosened her corsage.
A morocco case fell to the floor.
It was the one containing the alleged picture of Hubert Vander. Under the circumstances Dyke Darrel believed he was justified in examining it.
He opened the case, and was soon gazing at the face of a handsome man.
Although smoothly shaved, the face of the photograph was that of Harper Elliston!
A horrid suspicion now took possession of the detective's brain.
Securing case and photograph on his own person, Dyke Darrel proceeded in his efforts to bring the girl back to life.
He was soon rewarded.
"It was Hubert."
These were the first words uttered by the girl when she opened her eyes. Her hands were stained with blood from cuts made by the glass.
She gazed at the blood, and grew suddenly deathly pale.
"My God! he has tried to murder me!"
Then she came to her feet, flinging her tangled golden hair about wildly, and shrank to the far corner of the room.
"You have nothing to fear from me, Miss Osborne," said Dyke. "I am your friend."
"And Hubert's friend?"
"Yes, Hubert's friend, too."
"Who did this, then?"
She held up her bleeding hands.
He tried to explain, and she seemed to understand partially, so much so as to lose her fear of the detective.
She began to laugh soon, and the late adventure seemed to pass entirely from her mind. Dyke was glad to have it so.
"Will you not lie down and rest?" he said presently. "We have a long journey to go in the morning."
"Where? To Hubert?"
"Yes, to Hubert."
Her great blue eyes regarded him wistfully, and a throb of pain entered his heart at thought of the beautiful girl's misfortune. There was growing in his heart a dangerous feeling, one that boded no good to Harper Elliston, should that man prove to be as he now believed, the Hubert Vander of the mad girl's dreams.
"Take me to Hubert now, kind sir. I know you can do so, and I shall die if he does not keep his word with me. He will never betray a poor girl--such a gentleman, and so good? Yes, I will do anything to please you, for it will bring dear Hubert back."
She went up and laid both hands on the shoulders of the detective, and looked so mournfully into his face as to touch the tenderness in his nature deeply. His heart bled for the girl who had been the victim of a villain's wiles.
"Sit down and rest, Miss Osborne; we will try and find Hubert in the morning."
"You are very kind."
She seemed gentle and subdued now. It was the calm after the storm. Dyke saw that he was not recognized, however, and the madness was not gone from the poor girl's brain.
It was a very sad case, indeed.
Several stools were in the room, and some blankets hung against the further wall, proving that some one had lately occupied the cabin. Undoubtedly it had been used as a hiding-place for outlaws, and it was a question in the mind of the detective as to how soon the cabin would be revisited. The presence of the insane girl necessarily altered his plans somewhat. He could not leave her to perish in the woods.
Removing the blankets from the wall, Dyke Darrel improvised a bed for the poor girl, and induced her to lie thereon. He then replenished the fire with some dry sticks that lay beside the stove, since the night air was chill, and sat himself upon the floor, with his head reclining against the logs. Before doing this, however, he had taken the precaution to secure the only door with a wooden latch that had been made for the purpose.
The window, of course, he was unable to secure.
It did not seem hardly safe to sleep under the circumstances, but Dyke Darrel was very tired, having been without much rest for several nights, and he was on the present occasion extremely drowsy.
Resolving not to fall into a deep slumber, the detective sat with his revolver at his side, and went off into the land of dreams before he was aware of it.
Dyke Darrel slept heavily.
A crackling sound outside did not reach his ear with sufficient force to waken him. A face peered in at the window, dark and sinister, but the sleeping detective heeded it not.
Another face, girded about with bristling red hair, appeared for a moment, and then receded. Dark forms moved about the cabin without, and engaged in a whispered conversation.
Presently the trees and bushes became visible, and there was a smell of burning wood in the air.
"It is well," uttered a voice. "They will both perish like rats in a trap. Dyke Darrel, the famous detective, will never be heard of more, and that girl--well, she will be better dead than living. Come, Nick, let us go!"
"You're sure the door's tightly fastened?" "I fixed it so Satan himself could not open it."
"Good."
"Let us go!"
"Wait. I'd like to see the curse roast."
"No, no; that won't do. We'll come in the day time and look at the bones. This old log hut has had its day, and we could not put it to a better use than to make a mausoleum for the man-tracker of the West."
There was no hesitating after this.
The two men moved swiftly away in the gloom that surrounded the burning cabin.
A choking sensation caused the reclining man in the cabin to stir uneasily.
Presently he opened his eyes.
The room was full of smoke, and red tongues of flame were licking at the logs from every side.
Quickly Dyke Darrel came to his feet. A smell of burning garments filled his nostrils. The bed on which Sibyl Osborne rested was on fire!
"My soul! this is unfortunate," cried the detective. He was equal to the emergency, however. Springing to the side of the still sleeping girl, Dyke lifted her in his arms and strode to the door.
Quickly he slipped the rude bolt and grasped the latch. It refused to yield.
The door was firmly secured on the outside. _