For a moment we remained thus, and I marvelled greatly to see a man whose heart, if full of evil, I had yet deemed stout enough, stricken by fear into so parlous and pitiful a condition.
Then I had the explanation of it as he lifted his right hand and made the sign of the cross, first upon himself, then in the air, whilst his lips moved, and I guessed that to himself he was muttering some prayer of exorcising purport. There was the solution of the terror--sweat that stood out in beads upon his brow--he had deemed me a spectre; the spectre of a man he believed to have foully done to death on a spot across the Loire visible from the window at my back.
At last he sufficiently mastered himself to break the awful silence.
"What do you want?" he whispered; then, his voice gaining power as he used it--"Speak," he commanded. "Man or devil, speak!"
I laughed for answer, harshly, mockingly; for never had I known a fiercer, crueller mood. At the sound of that laugh, satanical though may have been its ring, he sprang up again, and unsheathing a dagger he took a step towards me.
"We shall see of what you are made," he cried. "If you blast me in the act, I'll strike you!"
I laughed again, and raising my arm I gave him the nozzle of a pistol to contemplate.
"Stand where you are, St. Auban, or, by the God above us, I'll send your ghost a-wandering," quoth I coolly.
My voice, which I take it had nothing ghostly in it, and still more the levelled pistol, which of all implements is the most unghostly, dispelled his dread. The colour crept slowly back to his cheeks, and his mouth closed with a snap of determination.
"Is it, indeed, you, master meddler?" he said. "Peste! I thought you dead these three months."
"And you are overcome with joy to find that you were in error, eh, Marquis? We Luynes die hard."
"It seems so, indeed," he answered with a cool effrontery past crediting in one who but a moment ago had looked so pitiful. "What do you seek at Canaples?"
"Many things, Marquis. You among others."
"You have come to murder me," he cried, and again alarm overspread his countenance.
"Hoity, toity, Marquis! We do not all follow the same trade. Who talks of murder? Faugh!"
Again he took a step towards me, but again the nozzle of my pistol drove him back. To have pistoled him there and then as he deserved would have brought the household about my ears, and that would have defeated my object. To have fallen upon him and slain him with silent steel would have equally embarrassed me, as you shall understand anon.