"It is fitting for you to die in your own house," Lucas amended.
Without further parley we turned into the Rue des Innocents, on our way to that of the Coupejarrets.
Now, I had been on the watch from the first instant for foul play. I had suspected something wrong with the sword, but my lord, who knew, had accepted it. Then, when Lucas proposed no seconds, I had felt sure of a trap. But his inviting my presence at the place of our choice smelt like honesty.
M. Étienne remarked casually to me:
"Faith, there'll soon be as many ghosts in the house as you thought you saw there—Grammont, Pontou, and now Lucas. What ails you, lad? Footsteps on your grave?"
But it was not thoughts of my grave caused the shudder, but of his. For of the three men of the lightning-flash, the third was not Lucas, but M. Étienne. What if the vision were, after all, the thing I had at first believed it—a portent? An appearance not of those who had died by steel, but of those who must. One, two, and now the third.
Next moment I almost laughed out in relief. It was not Pontou I had seen, but Louis Martin. And he was living. The vision was no omen, but a mere happening. Was I a babe to shiver so?
And yet Martin, if not dead, was like to die. He was in duress as a Leaguer spy, to await King Henry's will. All who entered this house lay under a curse. We should none of us pass out again, save to our tombs.
We entered the well-remembered little passage, the well-remembered court, where shards of glass still strewed the pavement. Some one—the gendarmes, I fancy, when they took away Pontou—had put a heavy padlock on the door Lucas and Grammont left swinging.
"We go in by your postern, Félix," my master said. "M. Lucas, I confess I prefer that you go first."