CHAPTER XVIII -- "Loch Sloy!"
The rap that startled Doom in the midst of his masquerade in the chapelof his house, came like the morning beat of drums to his guest a storeylower. Count Victor sprang up with a certainty that trouble brew,dressed with all speed, and yet with the coolness of one who hasheard alarums on menaced frontiers; took his sword in hand, hesitated,remembered Olivia, and laid it down again; then descended the dark stairthat seemed the very pit of hazards.
A perturbing silence had succeeded the noisy summons on the oak, andMungo, with a bold aspect well essayed, but in no accord with thetremour of his knees and the pallor of his countenance, stood, indragging pantaloons and the gaudy Kilmarnock cap cocked upon his baldhead, at the stair-foot with a flambeau in his hand. He seemed hugelyrelieved 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; butthe sentence trailed off unconvincingly, because his answer came toopromptly in another peremptory summons from without.
"Lord keep 's!" whispered the little man, no longer studying to sustainhis martial _role_. He looked nervously at Count Victor standingsilently by, with some amusement at the perturbation of the garrison anda natural curiosity as to what so untimely a visit might portend. It wasapparent that Mungo was for once willing to delegate his duty as keeperof the bartizan to the first substitute who offered, but here was nomove 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 hisknees bent below the weight of accumulated terror, and Montaiglon mustsmile 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'shusband."
"I'd gie a pound Scots to ken wha chaps," said Mungo, deaf to everyhumour.
"Might I suggest your asking? It is, I have heard, the customaryproceeding," said Count Victor.
"Wha's there?" cried Mungo, with an ear to the wood, that appeared tohave nothing human outside, for now for a little there was absolutestillness. Then an answer as from a wraith--the humble request of someone for admission.
"Noo, that's michty droll," said Mungo, his face losing its alarm andtaking on a look of some astonishment. "Haud that," and he thrust thetorch in the Frenchman's hand. Without another word he drew back thebars, opened the door, and put out his head. He was caught by the throatand plucked forth into the darkness.
Count Victor could not have drawn a weapon had he had one ere thedoor fell in thundering on the walls. He got one glimpse of the _sansculottes_, appealed again to the De Chenier macer in his ancestry, andflung the flambeau at the first who entered.
The light went out; he dropped at a boy's intuition upon a knee andlowered his head. Over him in the darkness poured his assailants, tooclose upon each other in their eagerness, and while they struggledat the stair-foot he drew softly back. Out in the night Mungo wailedlugubrious in the hands of some of his captors; within there wasa wonderful silence for a little, the baffled visitors recoveringthemselves with no waste of words, and mounting the stair in pursuit ofthe gentleman they presumed to have preceded them. When they were wellup, he went to the door and made it fast again, leaving Mungo to thefate his stupidity deserved.
Doom's sleeping-chamber lay behind; he passed along the corridorquickly, knocked at the door, got no answer, and entered.
It was as he had fancied--his host was gone, his couch had not beenoccupied. A storm of passion swept through him; he felt himself thatcontemptible thing, a man of the world betrayed by a wickedness thatought 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 ofits waking; she at least was innocent of all these machinations, andupstairs now, she shared, without a doubt, the alarms of Annapla. Thatfamiliar of shades and witches, that student of the fates, was anoisy poltroon when it was the material world that threatened; she wasshrieking again.
"Loch Sloy! Loch Sloy!" now rose the voices overhead, surely themaddest place in the world for a Gaelic slogan: it gave him a sense ofunspeakable savagery and antique, for it was two hundred years since hisown 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 hishost 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 hisfolk surged through his veins, and without a weapon he went upstairs,trusting to his wits to deal best with whatever he would thereencounter.
It seemed an hour since they had entered; in truth it was but a minuteor two, and they were still in the bewildering blackness of the stair,one behind another in its narrow coils, and seemingly wisely dubious oftoo precipitate an advance. He estimated that they numbered less thanhalf 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, andclutched to drag the last man down. Fate was kind, she gave the bareknees of the enemy to his hand, and behold! here was his instrument--inthe customary knife stuck in the man's stocking. It was Count Victor'sat a flash: he stood a step higher, threw his arm over the shoulder ofthe man, pulled him backward into the pit of the stair and stabbed athim as he fell.
"_Un!_" said he as the wretch collapsed upon himself, and the knifeseemed now unnecessary. He clutched the second man, who could not guessthe tragedy behind, for the night's business was all in front, andsurely only friends were in the rear--he clutched the second lower, andthrew him backward over his head.
"_Deux!_" said Count Victor, as the man fell limp behind him upon hisunconscious confederate.
The third in front turned like a viper when Count Victor's clutch cameon 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 offthe balance and threw him on the top of his confederates below.
"_Trois!_" said Montaiglon. "Pulling corks is the most excellenttraining for such a warfare," and he set himself almost cheerfully tonumber four.
But number four was not in the neck of the bottle: this ferment behindhim propelled him out upon the stairhead, and Montaiglon, who had thrownhimself upon him, fell with him on the floor. Both men recovered theirfeet at a spring. A moment's pause was noisy with the cries of thedomestic in her room, then the Frenchman felt a hand pass rapidlyover his habiliments and seek hurriedly for his throat, as on a suddeninspiration. What that precluded was too obvious: he fancied he couldfeel the poignard already plunging in his ribs, and he swiftly tried afall with his opponent.
It was a wrestler's grip he sought, but a wrestler he found, for armsof a gigantic strength went round him, clasping his own to his side andrendering his knife futile; a Gaelic malediction hissed in his ear; hefelt breath hot and panting; his own failed miserably, and his bloodsang in his head with the pressure of those tremendous arms that caughthim to a chest like a cuirass of steel. But if his hands were bound hisfeet were free: he placed one behind his enemy and flung his weight uponhim, 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 thebreast heaving under him, but he heard as from another world--as from aworld of calm and angels--the voice of Olivia in her room crying forher father, and a revulsion seized him, so that he hesitated at his uglytask. It was less than a second's slackness, yet it was enough, for hisenemy rolled free and plunged for the stair. Montaiglon seized him as hefled; the skirt of his coat dragged through his hands, and left him witha button. He dropped it with a cry, and turned in the darkness to findhimself more frightfully menaced than before.
r /> This time the plunge of the dirk was actual; he felt it sear his sidelike a hot iron, and caught the wrist that held it only in time to checka second blow. His fingers slipped, his head swam; a moment more, anda Montaiglon was dead very far from his pleasant land of France, in aphantom castle upon a shadowy sea among savage ghosts.
"Father! father!"
It was Olivia's voice; a light was thrown upon the scene, for she stoodbeside the combatants with a candle in her hand.
They drew back at a mutual spasm, and Montaiglon saw that his antagonistwas the Baron of Doom!