Part 15 (1/2)

”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 those statements are, to put it coa.r.s.ely, 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 hoa.r.s.e 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 a.s.sent. All his feeling and pa.s.sion 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 b.u.t.t 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 impa.s.se. 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 s.n.a.t.c.hed up the pistol, and we both stood trembling with pa.s.sion. 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 a.s.surance 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 wall 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.

”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.”