"If I mus' kill you I shall do so. Otherwise I have sufficient trouble to keep me from ennui. My frien', I am going home to enjoy my property. If you live or die it signifies nothing to me. No! Why, for the pleasure of killing you, should I bring your dirty gendarmes on my heels?" He backed away to the edge of the thicket, venturing one swift and evil glance at the girl who stood as though dazed. "Listen attentively," he said to Darragh. "One of my men remains hidden very near. He is a dead shot. His aim is at your--sweetheart's--body. You understan'?" "Yes." "Ver' well. You shall not go away for one hour time. After that----" he took off his slouch hat with a sweeping bow--"you may go to hell!" Behind him the bushes parted, closed. Jose Quintana had made his adieux. EPISODE NINE THE FOREST AND MR. SARD I When at last Jose Quintana had secured what he had been after for years, his troubles really began. In his pocket he had two million dollars worth of gems, including the Flaming Jewel. But he was in the middle of a wilderness ringed in by hostile men, and obliged to rely for aid on a handful of the most desperate criminals in Europe. Those openly hostile to him had a wide net spread around him--wide of mesh too, perhaps; and it was through a mesh he meant to wriggle, but the net was intact from Canada to New York. Canadian police and secret agents held it on the north: this he had learned from Jake Kloon long since. East, west and south he knew he had the troopers of the New York State Constabulary to deal with, and in addition every game warden and fire warden in the State Forests, a swarm of plain clothes men from the Metropolis, and the rural constabulary of every town along the edges of the vast reservation. Just who was responsible for this enormous conspiracy to rob him of what he considered his own legitimate loot Quintana did not know. Sard's attorney, Eddie Abrams, believed that the French police instigated it through agents of the United States Secret Service. Of one thing Quintana was satisfied, Mike Clinch had nothing to do with stirring up the authorities. Law-breakers of his sort don't shout for the police or invoke State or Government aid. As for the status of Darragh--or Hal Smith, as he supposed him to be--Quintana took him for what he seemed to be, a well-born young man gone wrong. Europe was full of that kind. To Quintana there was nothing suspicious about Hal Smith. On the contrary, his clever recklessness confirmed that polished bandit's opinion that Smith was a gentleman degenerated into a crook. It takes an educated imagination for a man to do what Smith had done to him. If the common crook has any imagination at all it never is educated.