"But, man! I never thought it was anything else!" The other smiled whimsically.
"So many times," he said, "I have thrown myself under my opponent's guard. Or dropped sideways, on one knee, to cut with the double-edged blade!"
If this referred to the rules of fencing, it was weird talk. Dr. Laurier saw Martin's expression.
"In imagination," he explained dryly. "Are you well read in the history of small-arms?"
"I'm afraid not."
"There was the 'Fifty-fifty,' where you threw yourself in to catch his unedged blade in your left hand and kill him with the right. If your left hand in the least slipped, you were a dead man. There was the Spanish 'Low-High' with double-edgers: you parried a cut low to the right; you dropped on one knee to cut across the back of the knees above the ankles; then rose and thrust him through the side. There was the 'Vanity'; a very narrow mirror set into the blade along its length. Only a thread of it, unperceived till play began; but it blinded him with its flash.
"There was the botte de Jesuite, mentioned in Esmond. It really existed, and was a perfectly fair device of swordsmanship, unlike the others; they were outlawed. — But I bore you," Dr. Laurier added evenly.
"Not a bit. But some other time…"
"I speak," said the doctor, "of what interests me privately. It is the hobby of a lonely man. Do you understand?"
"I do."