The rap that startled Doom in the midst of his masquerade in the chapel
of his house, came like the morning beat of drums to his guest a storey
lower. Count Victor sprang up with a certainty that trouble brew,
dressed with all speed, and yet with the coolness of one who has
heard alarums on menaced frontiers; took his sword in hand, hesitated,
remembered Olivia, and laid it down again; then descended the dark stair
that seemed the very pit of hazards.
A perturbing silence had succeeded the noisy summons on the oak, and
Mungo, with a bold aspect well essayed, but in no accord with the
tremour of his knees and the pallor of his countenance, stood, in
dragging pantaloons and the gaudy Kilmarnock cap cocked upon his bald
head, at the stair-foot with a flambeau in his hand. He seemed hugely
relieved to have the company of Count Victor.
“Noo, wha the deevil can we hae here at sic an unearthly oor o' nicht?”
said he, trying a querulous tone befitting an irate sentinel; but
the sentence trailed off unconvincingly, because his answer came too
promptly in another peremptory summons from without.
“Lord keep 's!” whispered the little man, no longer studying to sustain
his martial _rôle_. He looked nervously at Count Victor standing
silently by, with some amusement at the perturbation of the garrison and
a natural curiosity as to what so untimely a visit might portend. It was
apparent that Mungo was for once willing to delegate his duty as keeper
of the bartizan to the first substitute who offered, but here was no
move to help him out of his quandary.
“It's gey gash this!” whispered the little man. “And the tide in, too!
And the oor sae late!”
These sinister circumstances seemed to pile upon his brain till his
knees bent below the weight of accumulated terror, and Montaiglon must
smile at fears not all unreasonable, as he felt himself.
“Oh! better late than never--is not that the proverb, Master Mungo?”
said he. “Though, indeed, it is not particularly consoling to a widow's
husband.”
“I'd gie a pound Scots to ken wha chaps,” said Mungo, deaf to every
humour.
“Might I suggest your asking? It is, I have heard, the customary
proceeding,” said Count Victor.
“Wha's there?” cried Mungo, with an ear to the wood, that appeared to
have nothing human outside, for now for a little there was absolute
stillness. Then an answer as from a wraith--the humble request of some
one for admission.
“Noo, that's michty droll,” said Mungo, his face losing its alarm and
taking on a look of some astonishment. “Haud that,” and he thrust the
torch in the Frenchman's hand. Without another word he drew back the
bars, opened the door, and put out his head. He was caught by the throat
and plucked forth into the darkness.
Count Victor could not have drawn a weapon had he had one ere the
door fell in thundering on the walls. He got one glimpse of the _sans
culottes_, appealed again to the De Chenier macer in his ancestry, and
flung the flambeau at the first who entered.
The light went out; he dropped at a boy's intuition upon a knee and
lowered his head. Over him in the darkness poured his assailants, too
close upon each other in their eagerness, and while they struggled
at the stair-foot he drew softly back. Out in the night Mungo wailed
lugubrious in the hands of some of his captors; within there was
a wonderful silence for a little, the baffled visitors recovering
themselves with no waste of words, and mounting the stair in pursuit of
the gentleman they presumed to have preceded them. When they were well
up, he went to the door and made it fast again, leaving Mungo to the
fate his stupidity deserved.
Doom's sleeping-chamber lay behind; he passed along the corridor
quickly, knocked at the door, got no answer, and entered.
It was as he had fancied--his host was gone, his couch had not been
occupied. A storm of passion swept through him; he felt himself that
contemptible thing, a man of the world betrayed by a wickedness that
ought to be transparent. They were in the plot then, master and man,
perhaps even--but no, that was a thought to quell on the moment of
its waking; she at least was innocent of all these machinations, and
upstairs now, she shared, without a doubt, the alarms of Annapla. That
familiar of shades and witches, that student of the fates, was a
noisy poltroon when it was the material world that threatened; she was
shrieking again.
“Loch Sloy! Loch Sloy!” now rose the voices overhead, surely the
maddest place in the world for a Gaelic slogan: it gave him a sense of
unspeakable savagery and antique, for it was two hundred years since his
own family had cried “Cammercy!” on stricken fields.
He paused a moment, irresolute.
A veritable farce! he thought. It would have been so much easier for his
host to hand him over without these play-house preliminaries.
But Olivia! but Olivia!
He felt the good impulse of love and anger, the old ichor of his
folk surged through his veins, and without a weapon he went upstairs,
trusting to his wits to deal best with whatever he would there
encounter.
It seemed an hour since they had entered; in truth it was but a minute
or two, and they were still in the bewildering blackness of the stair,
one behind another in its narrow coils, and seemingly wisely dubious of
too precipitate an advance. He estimated that they numbered less than
half a dozen when he came upon the rear-most of the _queue_.
“Loch Sloy!” cried the leader, somewhat too theatrically for illusion.
“Cammercy for me!” thought Montaiglon: he was upon the tail, and
clutched to drag the last man down. Fate was kind, she gave the bare
knees of the enemy to his hand, and behold! here was his instrument--in
the customary knife stuck in the man's stocking. It was Count Victor's
at a flash: he stood a step higher, threw his arm over the shoulder of
the man, pulled him backward into the pit of the stair and stabbed at
him as he fell.
“_Un!_” said he as the wretch collapsed upon himself, and the knife
seemed now unnecessary. He clutched the second man, who could not guess
the tragedy behind, for the night's business was all in front, and
surely only friends were in the rear--he clutched the second lower, and
threw him backward over his head.
“_Deux!_” said Count Victor, as the man fell limp behind him upon his
unconscious confederate.
The third in front turned like a viper when Count Victor's clutch came
on his waist, and drove out with his feet. The act was his own undoing.
It met with no resistance, and the impetus of his kick carried him off
the balance and threw him on the top of his confederates below.
“_Trois!_” said Montaiglon. “Pulling corks is the most excellent
training for such a warfare,” and he set himself almost cheerfully to
number four.
But number four was not in the neck of the bottle: this ferment behind
him propelled him out upon the stairhead, and Montaiglon, who had thrown
himself upon him, fell with him on the floor. Both men recovered their
feet at a spring. A moment's pause was noisy with the cries of the
domestic in her room, then the Frenchman felt a hand pass rapidly
over his habiliments and seek hurriedly for his throat, as on a sudden
inspiration. What that precluded was too obvious: he fancied he could
feel the poignard already plunging in his ribs, and he swiftly tried a
fall with his opponent.
It was a wrestler's grip he sought, but a wrestler he found, for arms
of a gigantic strength went round him, clasping his own to his side and
rendering his knife futile; a Gaelic malediction hissed in his ear; he
felt breath hot and panting; his own failed miserably, and his blood
sang in his head with the pressure of those tremendous arms that caught
him to a chest like a cuirass of steel. But if his hands were bound his
feet were free: he placed one behind his enemy and flung his weight upon
him, so that they fell together. This time Count Victor was uppermost.
His hands were free of a sudden; he raised the knife to stab at the
breast heaving under him, but he heard as from another world--as from a
world of calm and angels--the voice of Olivia in her room crying for
her father, and a revulsion seized him, so that he hesitated at his ugly
task. It was less than a second's slackness, yet it was enough, for his
enemy rolled free and plunged for the stair. Montaiglon seized him as he
fled; the skirt of his coat dragged through his hands, and left him with
a button. He dropped it with a cry, and turned in the darkness to find
himself more frightfully menaced than before.
This time the plunge of the dirk was actual; he felt it sear his side
like a hot iron, and caught the wrist that held it only in time to check
a second blow. His fingers slipped, his head swam; a moment more, and
a Montaiglon was dead very far from his pleasant land of France, in a
phantom castle upon a shadowy sea among savage ghosts.
“Father! father!”
It was Olivia's voice; a light was thrown upon the scene, for she stood
beside the combatants with a candle in her hand.
They drew back at a mutual spasm, and Montaiglon saw that his antagonist
was the Baron of Doom!