“This deed! What deed?” he stammered in answer. “I know nothing of it, Elsa Brant.”
“You know nothing of it? Yet it was done in your name, and you are here to receive me, who was kidnapped as I walked outside Leyden to be dragged hither with force by these monsters. Oh! have you no heart and no fear of judgment that you can speak thus?”
“Free her,” roared Adrian, rushing at the Butcher to see a knife gleaming in his hand and another in that of Black Meg.
“Stop your nonsense, Master Adrian, and stand back. If you have anything to say, say it to your father, the Count. Come, let us pass, for we are cold and weary,” and taking Elsa by the elbows they brushed past him, nor, indeed, even had he not been too bewildered to interfere, could Adrian have stayed them, for he was unarmed. Besides, where would be the use, seeing that the boat had gone and that they were alone on a winter’s night in the wind-swept wilderness, with no refuge for miles save such as the mill house could afford. So Adrian bent his head, for the snow had begun to fall again, and, sick at heart, followed them along the path. Now he understood at length why they had come to the Red Mill.
Simon opened the door and entered, but Elsa hung back at its ill-omened threshold. She even tried to struggle a little, poor girl, whereon the ruffian in front jerked her towards him with an oath, so that she caught her foot and fell upon her face. This was too much for Adrian. Springing forward he struck the Butcher full in the mouth with his fist, and next moment they were rolling over and over each other upon the floor, struggling fiercely for the knife which Simon held.
During all her life Elsa never forgot that scene. Behind her the howling blackness of the night and the open door, through which flake by flake the snow leapt into the light. In front the large round room, fashioned from the basement of the mill, lit only by the great fire of turfs and a single horn lantern, hung from the ceiling that was ribbed with beams of black and massive oak. And there, in this forbidding, naked-looking place, that rocked and quivered as the gale caught the tall arms of the mill above, seated by the hearth in a rude chair of wood and sleeping, one man, Ramiro, the Spanish sleuth-hound, who had hunted down her father, he whom above every other she held in horror and in hate; and two, Adrian and the spy, at death-grips on the floor, between them the sheen of a naked knife.
Such was the picture.
Ramiro awoke at the noise, and there was fear on his face as though some ill dream lingered in his brain. Next instant he saw and understood.
“I will run the man through who strikes another blow,” he said, in a cold clear voice as he drew his sword. “Stand up, you fools, and tell me what this means.”
“It means that this brute beast but now threw Elsa Brant upon her face,” gasped Adrian as he rose, “and I punished him.”