As he spoke he was hurrying Cartoner along, ever quicker and quicker, with a haste that must have been unconscious, as it certainly was unnatural to one who found a thousand trifles to interest him in the streets whenever he walked there.
Cartoner made no answer, and his companion expected none. They were in a narrow street now—between the backs of high houses—and had left the life and traffic of frequented thoroughfares behind them. Deulin turned once and looked over his shoulder. They were alone in the street. He released Cartoner’s arm, through which he had slipped his left hand in an effusive French way. He was fingering his stick with his right hand in an odd manner, and walked with his head half turned, as if listening for footsteps behind him. Suddenly he swung round on his heels, facing the direction from which they had just come.
Two men were racing up the street, making but little noise on the pavement.
“Any coming from the other side?” asked Deulin.
“No.”
“In the doorway,” whispered the Frenchman. He was very quick and quite steady. And there is nothing more dangerous on earth than a steady Frenchman, who fights with his brain as well as his arm. Deulin was pushing his companion back with his left hand into a shallow doorway that had the air of being little used. The long blade of his sword-stick, no thicker at the hilt than the blade of a sailor’s sheath-knife, and narrowing to nothing at the point, glittered in the moonlight.
“Here,” he said, and thrust the empty stick into Cartoner’s hand. “But you need not use it. There are only two. Ah! Ah!”
With a sharp little cry of delight he stepped out into the moonlight, and so quick were his movements in the next moments that the eye could scarcely follow them. Those who have seen a panther in liberty know there is nothing so graceful, so quick, so lithe and noiseless in animal life. And Deulin was like a panther at that moment. He leaped across the pavement to give one man a stinging switch across the cheek with the flat of the blade, and was back on guard in front of Cartoner like a flash. He ran right round the two men, who stood bewildered together, and did not know where to look for him. Once he lifted his foot and planted a kick in the small of his adversary’s back, sending him staggering against the wall. He laughed, and gave little, sharp cries of “Ah!” and “La!” breathlessly. He did a hundred tricks of the fencing-floor—performed a dozen turns and sleights of hand. It was a marvel of agility and quickness. He struck both men on shoulder, arm, hand, head, and leg; forward, backhanded, from above and below. He never awaited their attack—but attacked them. Was it not Napoleon who said that the surest way to defend is to attack?
The wonder was that, wielding so keen a point, he never hurt the men. The sword might have been a lady’s riding-whip, for its bloodlessness, from the stinging cuts he inflicted. But the whistle of it through the air was not the whistle of leather. It was the high, clear, terrifying note of steel.
The two men, in confusion, backed across the road, and finally ran to the opposite pavement, where they were half hidden by a deep shadow. Without turning, Deulin backed towards Cartoner, who stood still in the doorway.
“Even if they are armed,” said Deulin, “they won’t fire. They don’t want the police any more than we do. Can tell you, Cartoner, it would not suit my book at all to get into trouble in Warsaw now.”
While he spoke he watched the shadows across the road.
“Both have knives,” he said, “but they cannot get near me. Stay where you are.”
“All right,” said Cartoner. “Haven’t had a chance yet.”
And he gave a low laugh, which Deulin had only heard once or twice before in all the years that they had known each other.
“That’s the best,” he said, half to himself, “of dealing with a man who keeps his head. Here they come, Cartoner—here they come.”
And he went out to meet them.
But only one came forward. They knew that unless they kept together, Deulin could not hold them both in check. The very fact of their returning to the attack—thus, with a cold-blooded courage—showed that they were Poles. In an instant Deulin divined their intention. He ran forward, his blade held out in front of him. Even at this moment he could not lay aside the little flourish—the quick, stiff pose—of the fencer.
His sword made a dozen turns in the air, and the point of it came down lightly, like a butterfly, on the man’s shoulder. He lowered it further, as if seeking a particular spot, and then, deliberately, he pushed it in as if into a cheese.
“Voilà, mon ami,” he said, with a sort of condescension as if he had made him a present. As, indeed, he had. He had given him his life.
The man leaped back with a little yelp of pain, and his knife clattered on the stones. He stood in the moonlight, looking with horror-struck eyes at his own hand, of which the fingers, like tendrils, were slowly curling up, and he had no control
