Their Son; The Necklace Part 21

"How much?" asked he.

"Fifteen thousand pesetas."

The student clacked his tongue, like a drinker savoring the state and quality of good wine. The clerk added:

"I'm sure you've seen very few emeralds like these."

The white-bearded old gentleman had now come nearer. Saying nothing, he slid his hands into his trouser pockets. His face looked grave and puzzled. You would have thought his merchant soul had scented danger.

Darles gave him a glance. It was not yet too late. He still was honest.

There was still time for repentance.

The clerk set out a number of trays, and from these took various necklaces. His way of handling them, of caressing them with careful fingers, of spreading them out on the cloth, all showed his love of jewels. There were diamond, turquoise, sapphire, topaz necklaces.

The student hesitated. A dizzying pleasure, bitter-sweet, enveloped this nearness to crime. He kept asking:

"What's this one worth? And this?"

"This is very cheap. Two thousand pesetas."

"How about this ruby one?"

"Forty-five hundred."

Darles took them up, studied them carefully, put them down again.

Suddenly he felt his cheeks were growing very pale. To give himself countenance he commented:

"This black pearl one is very beautiful."

"Yes, and it's more expensive, too. Ten thousand pesetas."

Suddenly the old gentleman, who till then had uttered no word, exclaimed brusquely:

"Now then, I think you've talked enough!"

He turned to the clerk.

"Look out for these trays," he ordered.

Darles raised his head, and proudly looked the old man in the eyes, with the hauteur of one still innocent.

"What are _you_ interfering for?" he demanded. "What's the idea?"

"We can't waste any more time on you," answered the jeweler. "If I'm not mistaken, you're not overburdened with money."

He turned to his clerk again. The clerk stared in amaze. Imperatively the old man ordered:

"I tell you to put these trays away!"

The student had not yet, perhaps, fully decided to steal. Perhaps something good and sound still lay in his conscience, that might have barred him from fatal temptation at the crucial moment. But the merchant's provoking words spurred him on and made him sin. A spirit of revenge drove him to it. This is no novelty. How many times is crime nothing more than the logical reaction against injustice!

Beside himself, Enrique stretched out his hand toward the place where lay the emerald necklace. His fingers clutched convulsively. He turned, and with one leap reached the door.

At that second, two shots crackled.

Darles flung himself into mad, headlong flight toward the Viaducto. At first he heard a voice behind him, screaming:

"Stop him! Stop the thief! Stop thief!"

It was a horrible, nightmare voice. Then came the thunderous tumult of the pursuing mob. Before him, the pedestrians opened out. He saw astonishment and fear in their faces. As he rushed into the Calle de Bordadores, a man brandished a stick and tried to stop him. Darles veered to the left, and ran up the grade of the Calle Siete de Julio with the speed of a hare.

Some one threw a chair at him, from a doorway. It hardly grazed him, but tripped up his nearest pursuers. When the human hunting-pack, raging and giving tongue, rushed in under the archways of the Plaza Mayor, its menacing tumult echoed louder than ever:

"_Thief, thief! Stop thief!_"

Beside himself with terror, the student flung himself along. He kept straight ahead, reached the park railing and leaped it with one bound.

This saved him. The dim light and the shadows under the trees masked his figure. Still, he kept on running till he came to the fence again, and once more jumped it.

This time as he landed, his knees could no longer hold him up. They doubled, and he almost fell on his face. But he struggled up, once more, and still ran on and on. Now the pursuers' voices sounded far-off, under the echoing archways of the Plaza.

Darles kept fleeing down the Calle Toledo. He noticed that a good many women were looking at him with uneasiness. One woman cried:

"He's wounded!"

When he reached the Puerta Cerrada, the student drew near the famous cross that gives its name to the square. He could do no more. His legs were collapsing with exhaustion, his heart was bursting, his tongue protruding. A number of women, frightened, crowded about him.

"You're wounded!" they exclaimed. "What's the matter? They've shot you!"

There was no anger in their cries, but only simple pity. The student felt calmer. One of the women had a water-jug.

"Give me a drink!" stammered Enrique. "Water! I'm dying of thirst!"

He raised the lip of the jug to his mouth, and drank in huge swallows.

The women kept saying:

"You're wounded. Poor man! You'd better hurry to the hospital!"

To avoid waking suspicion, Darles answered:

"Yes, I'm on my way there, now."

Then he swallowed a few more mouthfuls, and fled toward the Calle de Segovia. He ran a long, long time, till his last strength was gone. He stopped then, and gathered his wits together. His wet clothes were glued to his body, giving him a disagreeable feeling of cold. His hands were red. What he had believed to be sweat, was blood.

"I'm wounded!" he murmured.

Then he understood what the women at Puerta Cerrada had told him. Just at that moment a slight nausea overcame him, and he had to lean against a wall. Presently he opened his eyes, and looked about him. He was in a steep, deserted little alleyway, with humble houses on either hand. Very near, looming up against the black immensity of the sky, appeared the huge mole of El Viaducto--that splendid, sinister height, that bridge spanning the city, whence so many a poor soul had bowed itself down to death in the leap of suicide.

Enrique Darles began to think again: