"Let the words go," I said between tightening lips, "but give me that pair of pistols, now!"

"For Sir Peter's use?"

"No, for mine."

"I shall not!"

"Oh, you would rather see me hanged, like Captain Hale?"

She whitened where she stood, tugging at her gloves, teeth set in her lower lip.

"You shall neither fight nor hang," she said, her blue eyes fixed on space, busy with her gloves the while--so busy that her whip dropped, and I picked it up.

There was a black loup-mask hanging from her girdle. When her gloves were fitted to suit her she jerked the mask from the string and set it over her eyes.

"My whip?" she asked curtly.

I gave it.

"Now," she said, "your pistol-case lies hid beneath my bed-covers. Take it, Mr. Renault, but it shall serve a purpose that neither you nor Walter Butler dream of!"

I stared at her without a word. She opened the beaded purse at her girdle, took from it a heaping handful of golden guineas, and dropped them on her dresser, where they fell with a pleasant sound, rolling together in a shining heap. Then, looking through her mask at me, she fumbled at her throat, caught a thin golden chain, snapped it in two, and drew a tiny ivory miniature from her breast; and still looking straight into my eyes she dropped it face upward on the polished floor. It bore the likeness of Walter Butler. She set her spurred heel upon it and crushed it, grinding the fragments into splinters. Then she walked by me, slowly, her eyes still on mine, the hem of her foot-mantle slightly lifted; and so, turning her head to watch me, she passed the door, closed it behind her, and was gone.

What the strange maid meant to do I did not know, but I knew what lay before me now. First I flung aside the curtains of her bed, tore the fine linen from it, burrowing in downy depths, under pillow, quilt, and valance, until my hands encountered something hard; and I dragged out the pistol-case and snapped it open. The silver-chased weapons lay there in perfect order; under the drawer that held them was another drawer containing finest priming-powder, shaped wads, ball, and a case of flints.

So all was ready and in order. I closed the case and hurried up the stairway to my room, candle in hand. Ha! The wainscot cupboard I had so cunningly devised was swinging wide. In it had been concealed that blotted sheet rejected from the copy of my letter to his Excellency--nothing more; yet that alone was quite enough to hang me, and I knew it as I stood there, my candle lighting an empty cupboard.




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