By Right of Sword

by Arthur W. Marchmont

This fact nearly cost me my life.

I was passing a narrow street when, without the slightest warning—though I cannot doubt that in some way my approach had been signalled—four men rushed out on me with drawn knives. By mere chance their first rush did not prove fatal; for two of them who struck at me came so close, that the knives gashed my clothes.

But when they missed their chance, I did not give them another. I sprang aside, whipped out my sword, sent up a lusty cry for help that made the houses ring again, and set my back against the wall to sell my life as dearly as I could. They closed round me and attacked instantly; a swift lunge sent my blade through one of them, a swinging cut made another drop his knife with a great cry of pain, and an unexpected, but tremendously violent back-handed blow with the hilt of my sword right in the face sent a third down reeling and half senseless.

A swinging cut made another drop his knife with a great cry of pain.

This sort of reception was by no means what they had expected; and as a shout in answer to my cry for help came from a distance, the unwounded man and the two who could get away rushed off at top speed; while the fourth who had only been dazed, struggled to his feet and would have staggered off as well had I let him. But I stopped him, made him give up his knife, and then I drove him before me to my rooms—only a very short distance off—without waiting for the man to come up who had replied to my shout for help. I did not want any help now. No one man was at all likely to do me any harm, and I might thus get to know the cause of the attack, without being troubled with any outside interference.

"Now, why did you seek to kill me?" I asked sternly, as soon as the man was in my room. "You're not a thief; your dress and style shew that. Why, then, do you turn assassin?"

"There should be no need for me to tell you that," said he, speaking with vehemence.

"Nevertheless, I ask it," I returned, with even more sternness. Evidently I was going to make another discovery; and when the man waited a long time before answering, I scanned him closely to see if I could guess his object. Clearly he was no thief. He was fairly well dressed in the style of an ordinary tradesman or a superior mechanic; his appearance betokened rather a sedentary life and his muscles had certainly not been hardened by any physical training. As certainly he was no police spy. He was the last man in the world to have been picked out for such a job as that of the attempt on my life. There was no probability of there being any private feud against me; that seemed ridiculous.