第95章

The candle was held up, and shaded from behind by a man's hand.

He was inspecting the beds from the threshold, satisfied that his victims were both in bed.

The man glided into the apartment.But at the first step something in the position of the cupboard and chair made him uneasy.He ventured no further, but put the candle on the floor and stooped to peer under the chair; but as he stooped.an iron hand grasped his shoulder, and a dagger was driven so fiercely through his neck that the point came out at his gullet.There was a terrible hiccough, but no cry; and half-a-dozen silent strokes followed in swift succession, each a death-blow, and the assassin was laid noiselessly on the floor.

Denys closed the door, bolted it gently, drew the post to, and even while he was going whispered Gerard to bring a chair.It was done.

"Help me set him up."

"Dead?"

"Parbleu."

"What for?"

"Frighten them! Gain time."

Even while saying this, Denys had whipped a piece of string round the dead man's neck, and tied him to the chair, and there the ghastly figure sat fronting the door.

"Denys, I can do better.Saints forgive me!""What? Be quick then, we have not many moments."And Denys got his crossbow ready, and tearing off his straw mattress, reared it before him and prepared to shoot the moment the door should open, for he had no hope any more would come singly, when they found the first did not return.

While thus employed, Gerard was busy about the seated corpse, and to his amazement Denys saw a luminous glow spreading rapidly over the white face.

Gerard blew out the candle; and on this the corpse's face shone still more like a glowworm's head.

Denys shook in his shoes, and his teeth chattered.

"What, in Heaven's name, is this?" he whispered.

"Hush! 'tis but phosphorus, but 'twill serve.""Away! they will surprise thee."

In fact, uneasy mutterings were heard below, and at last a deep voice said, "What makes him so long? is the drole rifling them?"It was their comrade they suspected then, not the enemy.Soon a step came softly but rapidly up the stairs: the door was gently tried.

When this resisted, which was clearly not expected, the sham post was very cautiously moved, and an eye no doubt peeped through the aperture: for there was a howl of dismay, and the man was heard to stumble back and burst into the kitchen, here a Babel of voices rose directly on his return.

Gerard ran to the dead thief and began to work on him again.

"Back, madman!" whispered Denys.

"Nay, nay.I know these ignorant brutes; they will not venture here awhile.I can make him ten times more fearful.""At least close that opening! Let them not see you at your devilish work."Gerard closed the sham post, and in half a minute his brush gave the dead head a sight to strike any man with dismay.He put his art to a strange use, and one unparalleled perhaps in the history of mankind.He illuminated his dead enemy's face to frighten his living foe: the staring eyeballs he made globes of fire; the teeth he left white, for so they were more terrible by the contrast; but the palate and tongue he tipped with fire, and made one lurid cavern of the red depths the chapfallen jaw revealed: and on the brow he wrote in burning letters "La Mort." And, while he was doing it, the stout Denys was quaking, and fearing the vengeance of Heaven; for one mans courage is not another's; and the band of miscreants below were quarrelling and disputing loudly, and now without disguise.

The steps that led down to the kitchen were fifteen, but they were nearly perpendicular: there was therefore in point of fact no distance between the besiegers and besieged, and the latter now caught almost every word.At last one was heard to cry out, "Itell ye the devil has got him and branded him with hellfire.I am more like to leave this cursed house than go again into a room that is full of fiends.""Art drunk? or mad? or a coward?" said another.

"Call me a coward, I'll give thee my dagger's point, and send thee where Pierre sits o' fire for ever.

"Come, no quarrelling when work is afoot," roared a tremendous diapason, "or I'll brain ye both with my fist, and send ye where we shall all go soon or late.""The Abbot," whispered Denys gravely.

He felt the voice he had just heard could belong to no man but the colossus he had seen in passing through the kitchen.It made the place vibrate.The quarrelling continued some time, and then there was a dead silence.

"Look out, Gerard."

"Ay.What will they do next?"

"We shall soon know."

"Shall I wait for you, or cut down the first that opens the door?""Wait for me, lest we strike the same and waste a blow.Alas! we cannot afford that."Dead silence.

Sudden came into the room a thing that made them start and their hearts quiver.

And what was it? A moonbeam.

Even so can this machine, the body, by the soul's action, be strung up to start and quiver.The sudden ray shot keen and pure into that shamble.

Its calm, cold, silvery soul traversed the apartment in a stream of no great volume, for the window was narrow.

After the first tremor Gerard whispered, "Courage, Denys! God's eye is on us even here." And he fell upon his knees with his face turned towards the window.

Ay it was like a holy eye opening suddenly on human crime and human passions.Many a scene of blood and crime that pure cold eye had rested on; but on few more ghastly than this, where two men, with a lighted corpse between them, waited panting, to kill and be killed.Nor did the moonlight deaden that horrible corpse-light.

If anything it added to its ghastliness: for the body sat at the edge of the moonbeam, which cut sharp across the shoulder and the ear, and seemed blue and ghastly and unnatural by the side of that lurid glow in which the face and eyes and teeth shone horribly.

But Denys dared not look that way.

The moon drew a broad stripe of light across the door, and on that his eyes were glued.Presently he whispered, "Gerard!"Gerard looked and raised his sword.