like a dart of lightning.

"Back!" he barked, and advanced one foot, falling into a guard. "This is
no concern of yours, Venner, nor yours, Tomlin. Back, I say!"

Tomlin stared into his furious face and laughed greedily. His keen eyes
had seen a vague, shadowy something in the cavern, that filled him with
the same passion which consumed Pearse.

"So you are the lucky one, eh, Pearse?" he chuckled, and his hand went
to his own rapier. He stepped back a pace, and, never taking his eyes
from Pearse, cried: "Venner, it's you and me against the devil and
Pearse! A pretty plot to fool us, indeed; but Pearse was too eager. Peep
into that hole, man, and see!"

Venner glared from one to the other, not yet inflamed as they were. But
what he saw in their faces convinced him that great stakes were up to
be played for, and he edged forward bent upon seeing for himself.

"Back!" screamed Pearse, presenting his rapier at Venner's breast.
Venner persisted, and the steel pricked him. Then, as Tomlin's weapon
rasped out, Venner's blood leaped to fighting-heat with his slight
wound, and in the next instant the three-sided duel was hotly in
progress.

Three-sided it became after the first exchanges. For Pearse, the most
skilled in fence, applied himself to Venner as his most dangerous foe,
and with the cunning of the serpent Craik Tomlin saw and seized his own
opportunity. Let Pearse and Venner kill each other, or let that end be
accomplished with his outside help, and there was the solution that
Dolores had demanded them to work out; one of them left, to be master of
the wealth of Croesus; to be the mate of a magnificent creature, who
could be goddess or she-devil at will.

With a satanic chuckle Tomlin drew back, leaving his friends to fight
themselves weary, his own rapier ever presented toward them, urging them
on with lashing tongue. And Venner flashed a look at him as Caesar did at
Brutus, and suffered for his lapse in vigilance. For with the pounce of
a leopard Pearse was upon him, and his rapier grated over Venner's guard
and darted straight at his throat. But Venner's time had not come yet;
Tomlin flashed his own weapon in and parried the stroke for him, backing
away again with a murderous snarl.

"Not yet, my friends!" he cried. "You're too strong yet, Pearse. At him,
Venner; let me see you draw blood as he has, that I may see my own way
clearer."

From the other end of the great chamber Dolores watched the conflict
fr