He took me by the arm and spoke in that cunning madman's way:
"I will make your fortune if you will let me go free. You shall have
millions. We will go to Quebec together and play at the tables, as I
did when I was a young man. My system cannot fail!"

"M. Duchaine," I pleaded, "won't you come back with me and let us talk
it over? Jacqueline is with me----"

"No, no," he cried, laughing. "You can't catch me with such a trick as
that. My little daughter has gone to New York to make our fortunes at
M. Daly's gaming-house. She will be back soon, loaded down with gold."

I saw an opening here.

"She _has_ come back," I answered. "She is not fifty yards away."

"With gold?" he inquired, looking at me doubtfully.

"With gold," I answered, trying to allure his imagination as Leroux had
done. "She has rich gold, red gold, such as you will love. You can
take up the coins in your fingers and let the gold stream slip through
them. Come with me, _monsieur_."

He hesitated and looked back into the darkness.

"I am afraid!" he exclaimed. "Listen, _monsieur_! There is a man
hiding there--a man with a sword. He tried to capture me to-day. But
I was too clever for him." He laughed with senile glee and rubbed his
hands together. "I was too clever for him," he chuckled. "No, no,
_monsieur_, I do not know who you are, but I am not going into that
tunnel alone with you. Perhaps you have a gallows there."

"Do you not want the gold, _monsieur_?" I cried in exasperation. "Do
you not want to see the gold that your daughter Jacqueline has brought
back from New York for you?"

I grasped him by the arm and tried to lead him with me. My argument
had moved him; cupidity had banished for the moment the dreadful
picture of the gallows that he had conjured up. I thought I had won
him.

But just as I started back into the tunnel, holding the arm of the old
man, who lingered reluctantly and yet began to yield, a pebble leaped
from the rocky platform and rebounded from the cliff. I cast a
backward glance, and there upon the opposite side I saw Leroux standing.

There was something appalling in the man's presence there. I think it
was his unchanging and implacable pursuit that for the moment daunted
me. And this was symbolized in his fur coat, which he wore open in the
front exactly as he had worn it that day when we met in the New York
store, and as I had always seen him wear it.

He stood bareheaded, and his mas