I had determined to join Larke with me in my undertaking, for I bethought me of his craving for strange paths and adventures, and hoped to discover in him a readiness of wit which would counteract my own scrupulous hesitancy. For this I implicitly believed that it was not so much the wariness that Julian bespoke which would procure success, as the instinct of opportunity, the power, I mean, at once to grasp the fitting occasion when it presented, and to predispose one’s movements in the way best calculated to bring about its presentment. In this quality I knew myself to be deficient. ’Twas ever my misfortune to confuse the by-ways with the high-road. I would waste the vital moment in deliberation as to which was shortest, and alas! the path I chose in the end more often than not turned out to be a cul-de-sac. In the particular business in which I was engaged such overweening prudence would be like to nullify my purpose, and further, destroy both Jack and myself. For beyond a description of Count Lukstein’s person which I had from Julian some while ago, I knew nothing but what he had told me in the prison; and that knowledge was too scanty to serve as the foundation for even the flimsiest plan. The region, the Castle, the aggregate of servants, and their manner of life—it behoved me to have certain information on all these particulars were I to pre-arrange a mode of attack. As things were, I must needs lie in ambush for chance, and seize it with all speed when it passed our way.
At Leyden I found Jack, very glum and melancholy, poring over a folio of Shakespeare. ’Twas the single author whom he favoured, and he read his works with perpetual interest and delight. “This is the book of deeds,” he would say, smacking a fist upon the cover. “There is but one bad play in it, and that is the tragedy of Hamlet. The good Prince is too speculative a personage.”
“You reached Bristol in time?” he asked, springing up as I entered the room.
“In time; but not a moment too soon,” I replied, and sat mum.
“Then Sir Julian Harnwood is safe?”
“No! There was never a hope of that.”
The old smile, half amusement, half contempt, flashed upon his lips; the old envy looked out from his eyes. I, of course, had bungled where a man of vigour might have accomplished.
“It was not for that end that he sent for me,” I hastened to add, and then I stuck. I had determined to relate to Jack forthwith the story of my mission, and to engage his assistance, but the actual sight of him overturned my intentions. I felt tongue-tied; I dared not tell him lest my resolution should trickle away in the telling; for I read upon his face his poor estimation of my powers, and I dreaded the ridicule of his comments upon my unfitness for the task to which I had set my hand. I had sufficient doubts of my own upon that score. Indeed, since I had entered the room, they had buzzed about me importunate as a cloud of gnats; for Larke had never been sparing of his homilies upon my incapacity. I think every article I possessed, at one time or another, had been twisted into a text for them; and now they all came flocking back to me, as my eyes ranged over the familiar objects they had been based upon. They seemed, in truth, to saturate the very air.
Hence, I confided to Larke no more than the fact of our journey into the Tyrol; its reason and purpose I kept secret to myself. And to this self-distrust, trivial matter though it was, I owed my subsequent misfortunes. It was the first link in the chain of disaster, and I forged it myself unwittingly.
“Jack,” said I, “you were ever fond of adventures. One lies at your door.”
“Of what kind?” he asked.
“A journey into the Tyrol.”
“For what purpose!”
“I cannot tell you. You must trust me if you come?” He looked at me doubtfully. “Your life will be risked,” I urged; “I can gratify you so far.”
He closed the Shakespeare with a bang. “When do we start?”
“As soon as ever we are prepared. To-morrow.”
“’Twere a pity to waste a day.”
I assured him that so far from wasting it, we should have much ado to get off even the next morning. For there were a couple of stout horses to be purchased, besides numberless other arrangements to be made. The horses we bought of a dealer in the Rapenburg, and then, enlisting the fencing-master to aid us, we sought the shop of an armourer in the Hout Straat. From him we bought a long sword and a brace of pistols each, whereupon Larks declared that we were equipped cap-à-pie, and loudly protested against further hindrance. I insisted, however, in adding a pair of long cloaks of a heavier cloth than any we possessed, and divers other warm garments. For we were now in the last days of September and I knew that winter comes apace in upland countries like the Tyrol. Then there were maps to be procured, and a route to be pricked out, so that it was late in the evening before we had completed our preparations.
Meanwhile I inquired of Larke how it had fared with Swasfield. It appeared that it was not until some hours after I had ridden off that the man regained his senses, and then he was still too weak to amplify his tidings; in fact, he had only recovered sufficiently to depart from Leyden two days before I returned. Doubtless to some extent his convalescence was retarded by grief for that he had not fulfilled his errand. For he was ever lamenting the omission of his message, and more particularly of that portion which referred to the road between Bristol and London. For swift horses had been stabled at intervals of fifteen miles along the whole stretch, and in order to make sure that no one but myself should have the profit of them, as Swasfield said, or rather, as I think, in order that my name might not transpire if Count Lukstein’s spies were watching the road and became suspicious at this posting of relays, it was arranged that they should be delivered only to the man who passed the word “Wast water,” that being the name of the lake in Cumberland on which my lands abutted.
Of our journey into the Tyrol I have but faint recollections. We set off the next morning with no more impediments than we could carry in valises fixed upon our saddles. Even Udal, my body-servant, I left behind, for he had neither liking nor aptitude for foreign tongues, a few scraps of French and a meagre knowledge of Dutch forced on him by his residence in the country being a that he possessed. He would, therefore, have only hindered our progress, and, besides, I had no great faith in his discretion. I was minded, accordingly, to secure some foreigner in Strasbourg who would think we were engaged upon a tour of pleasure; which I did, and dismissed him at Innsbruck.
For the rest I rode with little attention or regard for the provinces through which we passed. The very cities wherein we slept seemed the cities of a dream, so that now I am like one who strives to piece together memories of a journey taken in early childhood. An alley of trees recurs to me, the shine of stars in a midnight sky, or, again, the comfortable figure of a Boniface; but the images are confused and void of suggestion, for I rode eyes shut and hands clenched, as a coward rides in the press of battle.
At times, indeed, when we halted, I would turn industriously to my Horace. The book had fallen open at the Palinodia when I dropped it in the prison, so that Julian’s sketch was on the page opposite to the date September 14.
I append here the diagram which was to enable me to find an entrance into the Castle, and it will be seen that I had much excuse for studying it. In truth, I could make neither head nor tail of its signification.
‘Twas ever this outline of Lukstein Castle that I pondered, though Jack knew it not, and when he beheld the book in my hands would gaze at me with a troubled look of distrust. On the instant I would fall miserably to taking count of myself. “Here are you,” I would object to myself, “a bookish student of a mean stature and a dilatory mind. You have faced no weapon more deadly than a buttoned foil, and you would compel a man of great strength and indubitable cunning to a mortal encounter in the privacy of his own house, that is, supposing you are not previously done to death by his serfs, which is most like to happen.” Then would my courage, a very ricketty bantling, make weak protest: “You faced a blunderbuss and a volley of slugs, and you were not afraid.”
“But,” I would answer hotly, “you did not face them, you were running away. Besides, you had called your assailant a potato, and therefore had already a contempt for him. This time it is you who will be the potato, as you will most surely discover when Count Lukstein spits you on his skewer;” and so I would get me wretchedly to bed.
There were, indeed, but two thoughts which served to console me. In the first place, I was sensible that I had acquired some dexterity with the foils, and if I could but imagine a button on the point of the Count’s sword I might hope to hold my own. In the second, I remembered very clearly a remark of Julian’s. “The man’s a coward,” he had said, and I hugged the sentence to my breast. I repeated the words, indeed, until they fell into the cadence of a rhythm, and lost all meaning and comfort for me, sounding hollow, like the tapping of an empty nut.
Of what Larke suffered during that period I had no suspicion, but from subsequent hints I gather that his distress, though based upon far other grounds, was no whit inferior to my own. His behaviour, indeed, when I came to consider it, revealed to me new and amiable aspects of his character; for while he firmly disbelieved in my ability to captain an expedition, he never once pestered me for an explanation. I had entrusted the purse to his care, and at each town he made the arrangements for our stay, looked after the welfare of our horses, and, in short, took modestly upon himself the troublesome conduct of our travels. Knowing nothing of my purpose but its danger, and distrustful of its achievement, he yet rode patiently forward, humming over a French song, of which the refrain ran, I remember—Que toutes joies et toutes honneurs Viennent d’armes et d’amours.
For he possessed that delicate gift of sympathy which keeps the friend silent when the acquaintance multiplies his questions.
Thus we journeyed for over a month. It was, I fancy, on the 12th November that we reached the town of Innsbruck, the weather very shrewd and bitter, for snow had fallen in great quantities and a cutting wind blew from the hills. That night I told my companion of our destination, but disclosed no more of the business than that I had a private message for Count Lukstein’s ear, which must needs be delivered secretly if we were to save our lives. We stayed here for two days that we might rest our horses, and early on the 14th set off for Glurns, which lay some eighty miles away in a broad valley they called the Vintschgau. The snow, however, was massed very deep, and though the road was sound, for it was the highway into Italy, we did not come up with the village until two o’clock on the third afternoon. Beyond Glurns the road traversed the valley in a diagonal line through a dreary avenue of stunted limes, which in their naked leaflessness looked in the distance like a palisade. Into this avenue we passed, and were wellnigh across the dale and under its northern barrier of mountains, when Larke suddenly reined up.
“Childe Roland to the dark tower came,” he sang out. “Heaven send there be no one to complete the quotation!”
I followed the direction of his gaze. Right ahead of us the Castle, the rock whereon it was pinnacled, and the village, huddled on a little plateau at its base, stood out from the hill-side like a black stain upon the snow. A carriage-way, diverging from our road a hundred yards farther on, ran up towards it in long zigzags, and to this point we advanced.
“Look!” suddenly cried Larke. “We are not the first to visit the worthy Count to-day.”
From both directions carriages or sledges had turned into this track, so that the snow at its entrance was trampled by the hoofs of horses, and cut by intersecting curves.
“’Tis not certain,” I said, “that the marks were made to-day.”
“It is,” he replied, “else would the ruts have frozen.”
The thought that the Count had company doubled my disquiet. For there was the less chance of finding him alone, and I was anxious to have done with the matter.
The first angle made by the zigzags was thickly covered with a boskage of pines. Into this we led our horses, and fastening them in the heart of it where the trees were most dense, we crept towards the west corner. At this point the track bent back upon itself and mounted eastwards to the border of the village, turned again, threading the houses at the bottom of the cliff, struck up thence at a right angle in a clear, open stretch beneath the west face of the rock, and finally curved round at the back to the gates. For the entrance to the Castle fronted the hillside and not the valley.
I took my Horace from my pocket, and in an instant the diagram became intelligible to me. The long curving line represented the road, and the way of ascent, marked by the cross, was to be found on the western wall of rock, and above the open stretch of road. Of this we now commanded an unimpeded view, for the corner of the road at which we stood was situate to the west of the Castle.
“I see it!” I exclaimed, and I handed the book to Larke.
“So this is the secret of the poet’s fascination,” he answered. “But I see no path. The cliff is as smooth as an egg-shell, save for that one projecting rib.”
“That is the path,” I replied.
A shoulder of rock with a ribbon of snow upon its ridge jutted out from the summit of the cliff, and descended in an unbroken line to the road.
“’Tis impossible to ascend that,” said he. “We should break our necks for a surety or ever we were half-way up.”
“It shows steeper than it is,” I answered. “We are not well-placed for judging of its incline; for that we should see it in profile. But where snow lies, there a man may climb.”
Jack raised no further objection; but ever and again I noticed him gazing at me with a puzzled expression upon his face. We crouched down in the undergrowth until such time as the night should fall, blowing on our fingers and pressing close against each other for warmth’s sake. But ’twas of little use; my body tingled with cold, and I began to think my muscles would be frozen stiff, before the darkness gave us leave to move. The valley, moreover, looked singularly mournful and desolate in its shroud of white. As far as the eye could travel not a living thing could be seen, nor could the ear detect a sound. The region brooded in a sinister silence. I verily believe that I should have loosed my horse and fled but for the presence of my companion.
Jack, however, was in no higher spirits than myself, and from the continual glances of his eyes I think that he was infected with a wholesome fear of the rib of rock. At last the dusk fell; the lights began to twinkle in the village and in the upper windows of the Castle. For a wall, broken here and there by round turrets, circled about the edge of the cliff and hid the lower story from our sight.
We looked to the priming of our pistols, buckled our swords tighter about the waist, shook the snow from our cloaks, and cautiously stepped out on to the path. At the edge of the village we stopped. ’Twas but one street; but that very narrow and busy. Not a moment passed but a door opened, and a panel of orange light was thrown across the gloom, and the figures of men and women were seen passing and repassing. The village was astir and humming like a hive. But there was no other way. For on our right rose the tooth of rock in a sheer scarp; on our left the ground broke steeply away at the backs of the houses.
“We must make a dash for it,” said Larke. We waited until the street cleared for a moment, and then ran between the houses as fast as our legs would carry us. The snow deadened the sound of our feet, and we were wellnigh through the village when Larke tripped over a hillock and stumbled forward on his face with a curse. The next instant I dropped down beside him, and covering his mouth with my hand, forced him prone to the ground. For barely twenty feet ahead a door had suddenly opened, and a man dressed in the jacket and short breeches of the Tyroler came out on to the path. He stood with his back towards us and exchanged some jest with the inmates of the house, and I recognised his voice. I had heard it no more than once, it is true, but the occasion had fixed the sound of it for ever in my memories. It was the voice of the spy who had tracked us in the streets of Bristol. He turned towards the door, so that the light streamed full upon his face, shouted a “God be with you.” and strode off in the direction of the Castle. The sight of him left me no room for doubt. That he had outstripped us caused me, indeed, little surprise, for we had travelled by a devious way, and had, moreover, delayed here and there upon the road.
Larke commenced to sputter and cough.
“Quiet!” I whispered, for the man was yet within hearing.
“Loose your hand, then!” he returned. “’Tis easy enough to say quiet, but ’tis not so easy to choke quietly.”
In my fluster I was holding his head tightly pressed into the snow, so that he could only have caught the barest glimpse of the man. “Who was it?” he asked.
“One of Lukstein’s servants.”
“You know him?”
“I have seen him, and he has seen me. Maybe he would know me again.”
We got safely quit of the houses and turned into the upward stretch of road, towards the buttress of rock, It jutted out across our path, and was plainly distinguishable, for the night was pure and clean, and appeared to be tinctured with a vague light from the snow-fields. I noticed, too, that on the far side of the valley a pale radiance was welling over the brim of the hills with promise of the moon. ’Twas a very sweet sight to me, since climbing an unknown rock-ledge in the dark hath little to commend it, unless it be necessity.
At the foot of the rib we halted and prepared to ascend. But nowhere could I find a cranny for my fingers or a knob for my boot. The surface was indeed, as Jack had said, as smooth as an egg-shell. I stepped back to the outer edge of the road and examined it as thoroughly as was possible.
For the first twelve feet it was absolutely perpendicular; above that point it began to slope. It was as though the lowest portion of the rib had been cut purposely away.
And then I remembered! Julian had spoken only of a descent. Now a man may drop twelve feet and come to no harm, but once at the bottom he must bide there. There was but one way out of the difficulty, and luckily Larke’s shoulders were broad.
“You must lend me your back,” I said. “I will haul you up after me.”
He planted himself firmly against the rock, with his legs apart, and I climbed up his back on to his shoulders.
“You teach me mercy to my horse,” he said quietly.
“Why? What have I done?” I asked.
“Jabbed your spurs into my thighs and stood on them,” he replied in a matter-of-fact voice. “But ’tis all one. Blood was meant to be spilled.”
Being now more than five feet from the ground, I was able to worm my fingers into a crack at the point where the ridge began to incline, and so hoist myself on to an insecure footing. But it was utterly beyond my power to drag Larke after me, for the snow was thin and shallow, and underneath it the rock loose and shattered. I should most surely have been pulled over had I made the attempt. I ascended the ridge in the hope of discovering a more stable position, whence I could lower my cloak to my companion. But ’twas all slabs at a pretty steep slope, with here and there little breaks and ledges. I could just crawl up on my belly, but I could do no more. There was never a yard of level where you could secure a solid grip of the feet. So I climbed back again and leaned over the edge.
“Jack,” I said, “I can’t give you a helping hand. It would mean a certain fall.”
“I shall need little help, Morrice—very little,” he answered in a tone of entreaty.
“I can’t even give you that. The ridge is too insecure.”
“Ah! Don’t say that!” he burst out. “You have not come all these miles to be turned back by a foot or two of rock. It is absurd! It is worse than absurd. It is cowardly.”
“Hush!” I whispered gently. For I could gauge his disappointment, and gauging it, could pardon his railing.
“I have no thought of turning back.”
“Then what will you do? Morrice, this is no time for dreaming? What will you do?”
“Jack,” I said, “you and I must part company. I must win through this trouble by myself.”
I heard something like a sob; it was the only answer he made.
“Wait for me by the horses in the wood! Give me till dawn, but not a moment longer! If I am not with you then—well, ’tis the long good-bye betwixt you and me, Jack, and you had best ride for your life.”
Again he made no answer. For a moment I fancied that he had stolen away in a fury, and I craned my head over the rock, so that I could look down into the road. He was standing motionless with bent shoulders just beneath me.
“Jack!” I called. For it might well be the last time I should speak to him. We had been good friends, and I would not have him part from me in anger. “There is no other way. It can’t be helped.”
He turned up his face towards me, but it was too dark for me to read its expression.
“Very well, Morrice,” he said, and there was no resentment in his tone. “I will wait for your coming, and God send you come!”
And with a dull, heavy step he walked back along the path.
I turned and set my face to the cliff. After a while the ridge widened out, and the snow overlaid it more firmly, insomuch that a sure foot might have walked along by day. In the uncertain light, however—for the moon as yet hung low in a gap of the hills—I dared not venture it, and crept up on my hands and knees, testing carefully each tooth of rock or ever I trusted my weight to its stability. Towards the summit the rib thinned again to a sharp edge, and I was forced to straddle up it as best I could, with a leg dangling on either side. Altogether, what with the obstacles which the climb presented and numbing of my fingers, since the snow quickly soaked through my gloves, I made my way but slowly.
At the top I found myself face to face with the Castle wall, which was some ten feet in height, and quite solid and uncrumbled. Between it and the rim of the crag, however, was a strip of level ground about half a yard broad, and I determined to follow it round until I should reach some angle at which it would be possible to climb the wall. On this strip the snow was heavily piled, and for security’s sake I got me again to my hands and knees, flogging a path before me with the scabbard of my sword. I began to fear that I might be foiled in my endeavour for want of a companion; for again I bethought me, Julian only descended, and a man might drop from any portion of the wall, whereas the scaling of it was a different matter. I proceeded in the opposite direction to the Castle gates, and so came out above the south face of the precipice. Below me the houses of Lukstein village glimmered like a cluster of glow-worms; I had merely to roll over to fall dump among the roof-tops. I could even hear a faint murmur of brawling voices, and once I caught a plaintive snatch of song. For in that still, windless air sounds rose like bubbles in a clear pool of water.
The wall on my left curved and twisted with the indents of the cliff, and a little more than half-way across the face I came to a spot where it ran in and out at a sharp angle. Moreover, one of the turrets which I had remarked from the wood bulged out from the line, and made of this angle a sort of crevice. Into the corner I thrust my back, and working my elbows and knees, with some help from the roughness of the stones, I managed to mount on to the parapet. The Castle lay stretched before me. In front stood the main body of the building; to my right a shorter wing, ending in a tower, Jutted off towards the wall on which I lay. A broad terrace, enclosing in the centre a patch of lawn, separated me from the building.
I fixed my eyes upon the tower. The window of the lower room was dark, and, strangely enough, ’twas the only window dark in the house. From the upper room there shone a faint gleam as of a lamp ill-trimmed. But all the other windows in the chief façade and the more distant part of this wing blazed out into the night. I could see passing figures shadowed upon the curtains, and music floated forth on a ripple of laughter, gavotte being linked to minuet and pavane in an endless melody.
Every now and then some couple dainty with ribbons and jewels would step out from the porch, and with low voices and pensive steps pace the terrace until the cold froze the sweetness from their talk. They were plain to me, for the moon was riding high, and revealed even the nooks of the garden. Indeed, the only obscure corner was that in which I lay concealed. For a little pavilion leaned against the wall hard by me, and cast a deep shadow over the coping.
But I hardly needed even that protection to screen me from these truants. I might have stood visible in the lawn’s centre, and yet been asked no question. For such as braved the frost came not out to spy for strangers; their eyes sought each other with too intimate an insistence.
I had indeed timed my visit ill. The revels of the village were being repeated in the Castle.
The sharp contrast of my particular purpose forced its reality grimly upon me, and made this vigil one long agony. I had planned to tell Larke the true object of my coming during the hour or so we should have to wait, and to thaw some solace from his companionship. Now, however, I was planted there alone with a message of death for my foe or for myself, and the glamour of life in my eyes, and it seemed to me that all the tedium of my journey had been held over for these hours of waiting.
To cap my discomfort I found occasion to prove to myself that I was a most indisputable prig. I had often discoursed to Larke concerning the consolations to be drawn from the classics in moments of distress. Now I sought to practise the precept, and to that end lowered a bucket into the well of my memories. But alas! I hauled up naught but tags about Cerberus and Charon and passages from the sixth book of Virgil.
To tell the honest truth, I was dismally afraid. The very stars in the sky flashed sword-points at my breast, and the ice upon the hills glittered like breast-plates of steel. Moreover, my hands were swollen and clumsy with the cold, and I dreaded lest I might lose the nervous flexibility of their muscles, and so the nice command of my sword. I stripped off my gloves which were freezing on my fingers, and thrust my hands inside my shirt to keep them warm against my skin.
Somehow or another, however, the night wore through. The stars and the moon shifted across the mountains, the music began to falter into breaks, and the murmurs grew louder from the village. I heard sledges descend the road with a jingle of bells, first one, then another, then several in quick succession. Iron gates clanked on the far side of the Castle, the windows darkened, and finally a light sprang up in the lower of the chambers which I watched.
I turned over on my face and dropped on to the snow. But my spurs rattled and clinked as I touched the ground, and I stooped down and loosed them from my feet. I cast a hurried glance around me. Not a shadow moved; the world seemed frozen to an eternal immobility. I crept across the lawn, up the terrace steps to the sill of the window, and peered into the room. It was small and luxuriously furnished, the roof, panels, and floor being all of a polished and mellow pine-wood. Warm-coloured rugs and the skins of chamois were scattered on the floor, and four candles in heavy sconces blazed on the mantel. Sunning himself before the log-fire sat Count Lukstein. I knew him at once from Julian’s account: a big, heavy-featured man with a loose dropping mouth. He was elaborately dressed in a suit of gray satin richly laced with silver, which seemed somewhat too airy and fanciful to befit the massive girth of his limbs. These he displayed to their full proportions, and the sight did little to en-hearten me. For he sat with his legs stretched out and his arms clasped behind his head, the firelight playing gaily upon a sparkle of diamonds in his cravat.
I noted the two doors of which Julian had spoken—that on my right leading to the bedroom, that on my left to the hall—and in particular a small writing table which stood against the wall lacing me. For a silver bell upon it caught the light of the candles and reflected it into my eyes. And I remembered Julian’s story of his visit to the Hotwell.
Whether it was that I rattled the frame of the window, or that chance turned the Count’s looks my way, I know not; but he suddenly turned full towards me. My face was pressed flat to the glass. I drew back hastily into the shadow of the wall. One minute passed, two, three, the window darkened, and the Count, lifting his hands to his temples to shut out the light at his back, laid his forehead to the pane. Instinctively I clapped my hand to the pistol in my pocket and cocked it. The click of the hammer sounded loud in my ears as though I had exploded the charge. Count Lukstein flung open the window and set one foot outside.
“Who is it?” he cried; and yet again, “who is it?”
I drew a deep breath, stepped quickly past him into the room, and turned about. The two doors and the writing-table were now behind me.
He staggered back from the window, and his hand dived at the hilt of his sword. But before he could draw it he raised his eyes to my face; he let go of his sword and stared in sheer bewilderment.
“And in the devil’s name,” he asked, “who are you?”
“’Twas a humiliating moment for me. He spoke as a master might to an impudent schoolboy, and it was with a quavering schoolboy’s treble that I answered him.
“I am Morrice Buckler.”
“An Englishman?” he questioned, bending his brows suddenly; for we were speaking in German.
“Of the county of Cumberland,” I replied meekly. I felt as if I was repeating my catechism.
“Then, Mr Morrice Buckler, of the county of Cumberland,” he began, with an exaggerated politeness. But I broke in upon him.
“I have some knowledge of the county of Bristol, too,” I said, with as much bravado as I could muster. But ’twas no great matter. The display would have disgraced a tavern bully. The words, however, served their turn. Just for a second, just long enough for me to perceive it, a startled look of fear flashed into his eyes, and his body seemed to shrink in bulk. Then he asked suddenly,—“How came you here?”
“By a path Sir Julian Harnwood told me of,” says I. He stretched a finger towards the window.
“Go!” he cried in a low voice. “Go!”
I stood my ground, for I noted with a lively satisfaction that the quaver had passed from my voice into his.
“Have a care, Master Buckler!” he continued. “You are no longer in England. You would do well to remember that. There are reasons why I would have no disturbance here to-night. There are reasons. But on my life, if you refuse to obey me, I will have you whipped from here by my servants.”
“Ah!” says I, “this is not the first time, Count Lukstein, that some one has stood between you and the bell.”
He cast a glance over my shoulder. I saw that he was going to shout, and I whipped out the pistol from my pocket.
“If you shout,” I said, “the crack of this will add little to the noise.”
“It would go ill with you if you fired it,” he blustered.
“It would go yet worse with you,” I answered.
And there we stood over against one another, the finest brace of cowards in Christendom, each seeking to overcome the other by a wordy braggadocio. Indeed, my forefinger so trembled on the trigger that I wonder the pistol did not go off and settle our quarrel out of hand.
“What does it mean?” he burst out, screwing himself to a note of passion. “What does it mean? You skulk into my house like a thief.”
“The manner of my visit does in truth leave much to be desired.” I conceded. “But for that you must thank your reputation.”
“It does, in truth,” he returned, ignoring my last words. “It leaves much—very much. You see that yourself, Mr Buckler. So, to-morrow! Return by the way you came, and come to me again to-morrow. We can talk at leisure. It is over-late to-night.”
“Nay, my lord,” said I, drawing some solid comfort from the wheedling tone in which he spoke. “Your servants will be abroad in the house to-morrow, and, as you were careful to remind me, I am not in England. I have waited for some six hours upon the parapet of your terrace, and I have no mind to let the matter drag to another day.”
His eyes shifted uneasily about the room; but ever they returned to the shining barrel of my pistol.
“Well, well,” said he at length, with a shrug of the shoulders, and a laugh that rang flat as a cracked guinea, “one must needs listen when the speaker holds a pistol at your head. Say your say and get it done.”
He flung himself into a chair which stood in the corner by the window. I sat me in the one from which he had risen, drawing it closer to the fire. A little table stood within arm’s reach, and I pulled it up between us and laid my pistol on the edge.
“I have come,” said I, “upon Sir Julian Harnwood’s part.”
“Pardon me!” he interrupted. “You will oblige me by speaking English, and by speaking it low.”
The request seemed strange, but ’twas all one to me what language we spoke so long as he understood.
“Certainly,” I answered. “I am here to undertake his share in the quarrel which he had with you, and to complete the arrangement which was interrupted on the Kingsdown.”
“But, Mr Buckler,” he said, with some show of perplexity, “the quarrel was a private one. Wherein lies your right to meddle with the matter?”
“I was Sir Julian’s friend,” I replied. “He knew the love I bore him, and laid this errand as his last charge upon it.”
“Really, really,” said he, “both you and your friend seem strangely ill-versed in the conduct of gentlemen. You say Sir Julian laid this errand upon you. But I have your bare word for that. It is not enough. And even granting it to be true, my quarrel was with Sir Julian, not with you. One does not fight duels by proxy.”
He had recovered his composure, and spoke with an easy superciliousness.
“My lord,” I answered, stung by his manner, “I must ask you to get the better of that scruple, as I have of one far more serious, for, after all, one does not as a rule fight duels with murderers.”
He started forward in his chair as though he had been struck. I seized the butt of my pistol, for I fancied he was about to throw himself upon me.
“I know more than you think,” said I, nodding at him, “and this will prove it to you.”
I drew the oval gold box from my fob and tossed it on to his knees. His hands darted at it, and he turned it over and over in his palms, staring at the cover with white cheeks.
“How got you this?” he asked hoarsely, and then remembering himself, “I know nothing of it. I know nothing of it.”
“Sir Julian gave it into my hands,” said I. “I visited him in his prison on the evening of the 22nd September.”
He stared at me for a while, repeating “the 22nd September” like one busy over a sum.
“The 22nd September,” said I, “the 22nd September. It was the day of his trial.”
At the words his face cleared wonderfully. He rose with an indescribable air of relief, flung the box carelessly on the table, and said with a contemptuous smile.—“Ah, Mr Buckler! Mr Buckler! You would have saved much time had you mentioned the date earlier. How much?” and he shook some imaginary coins in the cup of his hand.
“Count Lukstein!” I exclaimed.
I had not the faintest notion of what he was driving at, and the surprise which his change of manner occasioned me obscured the insult.
“Tut, tut, man!” he resumed, with a wave of the hand. “How much? Surely the farce drags.”
“The farce,” I replied hotly, “is one of those which are best played seriously. Remember that, Count Lukstein!”
“Well, well,” he said indulgently, “have your own way. But, believe me, you are making a mistake. I have no wish to cheapen your wares. That you have picked up some fragments of the truth I am ready to agree; and I am equally ready to buy your silence. You have but to name your price.”
“I have named it,” I muttered, locking my teeth, for I was fast losing my temper, and feared lest I might raise my voice sufficiently to be heard beyond the room.
“Let me prove to you that you are wasting time,” said he with insolent patience. “You have been ill-primed for your work. You say that you visited Sir Julian on the night of the 22nd. You say that you were Sir Julian’s friend. I would not hurt your feelings, Mr Buckler, but both these statements are, to put it coarsely, lies. You were never Sir Julian’s friend, or you would have known better than to have fixed that date. But two people visited him on the 22nd, a priest and a woman, the most edifying company possible for a dying man.” He ended with a smooth scorn.
I looked up at him and laughed.
“Ah!” said he, “we are beginning to understand each other.”
I laughed a second time.
“She was over-tall for a woman, my lord,” said I, “though of no great stature for a man.”
I rose as I spoke the words and confronted him. We were standing on opposite sides of the little table. The smile died off his face; he leaned his hands upon the table and bent slowly over it, searching my looks with horror-stricken eyes.
“What do you mean?” he asked in a hoarse whisper.
“I was the woman. How else should I have got that box?”
“You, you!” He spoke in a queer matter-of-fact tone of assent. All his feeling and passion seemed to have gathered in his eyes.
So we stood waging a battle of looks. And then of a sudden I noticed a crafty, indefinable change in his expression, and from the tail of my eye I saw his fingers working stealthily across the table. I dropped my hand on to the butt of my pistol. With a ready cunning he picked up the gold box and began to examine it with so natural an air of abstraction that I almost wondered whether I had not mistaken his design.
“And so,” says he at length, “you would fight with me?”
“If it please you, yes,” says I.
“Miss Marston, it seems, has more admirers than I knew of,” he returned, with a cunning leer which made my stomach rise at him.
He seemed incapable of conceiving a plain open purpose in any man. Yet for all that I could not but admire the nimbleness of his wits. Not merely had he recovered his easy demeanour, but he was already, as I could see, working out another issue from the impasse. I clung fast to the facts.
“I have never seen Miss Marston,” said I. “I fight for my friend.”
“For your friend? For your dead, useless friend?” He dropped the words slowly, one by one, with a smiling disbelief. “Come, come, Mr Buckler! Not for your friend. We are both men of the world. Be frank with me! Is it sensible that two gentlemen should spill honest blood for the sake of a feather-headed wanton?”
“If the name fits her, my lord,” I replied, “who is to blame for that? And as for the honest blood, I have more hope of spilling it than faith in its honesty.”
The Count’s face grew purple, and the veins swelled out upon his ample throat. I snatched up the pistol, and we both stood trembling with passion. The next moment, I think, must have decided the quarrel, but for a light sound which became distinctly audible in the silence. It descended from the room above. We both looked up to the ceiling, the Count with a sudden softness on his face, and I understood, or rather I thought I understood, why he had not raised the alarm before I produced my pistol, and why he bade me subsequently speak in English. For the sound was a tapping, such as a woman’s heels may make upon a polished floor.
I waited, straining my ears to hear the little stairway creak behind the door at my back, and cudgelling my brains to think what I should do. If she came down into the room, it was all over with my project and, most likely, with my life, too, unless I was prepared, to shoot my opponent in cold blood, and make a bolt for it. After a while, however, the sound ceased altogether, to my indescribable relief. The Count was the first to break the silence.
“Very well, Mr Buckler,” said he; “send your friends to me in the morning. Let them come like men to the door and give me assurance that I may meet you without loss of self-respect, and you shall have your way.”
“You force me to repeat,” said I, “that the matter must be disposed of to-night.”
“To-night!” he said, and stared at me incredulously. “Mr Buckler, you must be mad.”
“To-night,” I repeated stubbornly. For, apart from all considerations of safety, I felt that such courage as I possessed was but the froth of my anger, and would soon vanish if it were left to stand. The Count began to pace the room between the writing-table and the window. I set my chair against the wail and leaned against the chimney, and I noted that at each turn in his walk he drew, as though unconsciously, nearer and nearer to the bell.
He spoke in a queer matter-of-fact tone his feeling and passion seemed to have eyes.
“Mr Buckler,” he said, “what you propose is quite out of the question. I can but attribute it to your youth. You take too little thought of my side of the case. To fight with one whom I have never so much as set eyes on before, who forces his way into my house in the dead of night—you must see for yourself that it fits not my dignity.”
“You are too close to the bell, Count Lukstein, and you raise your voice,” I broke in sharply. “That fits not my safety.”
He stood still in the middle of the room and raised a clenched fist to his shoulder, glaring at me. In a moment, however, he resumed his former manner.
“Besides,” he went on, “there is a particular reason why I would have no disturbance here to-night. You got some inkling of it a moment ago.” He nodded to the ceiling.
I blush with shame now when I remember what I answered him. I took a leaf from his book, as the saying is, and could conceive no worthy strain in him.
“The good lady,” I said, “whom you honour with your attentions now must wait until the affairs of her predecessor are arranged.”
The Count came sliding over the floor with a sinuous movement of his body and a very dangerous light in his eyes.
“You insult my wife,” he said softly, and as I reeled against the hood of the fire-place, struck out of my wits by his words, he of a sudden gave a low bellowing cry, plucked his sword from his sheath, and lunged at my body. I saw the steel flash in a line of light and sprang on one side. The sword quivered in the wood level with my left elbow. My leap upset the table, the pistol clattered on the floor. I whipped out my sword, Count Lukstein wrenched his free, and in a twinkling we were set to it. I think all fear vanished from both of us, for Count Lukstein’s face was ablaze with passion, and I felt the blood in my veins running like strong wine.