‘Defend yourself!’ he said. ‘I shall kill you.’
Dickie recoiled. He would have faced anybody twice his size with fists as weapons, or advanced on a battery with a smiling face, but he had no taste for encountering an apparent lunatic armed with a weapon of which he himself did not know the use. Besides, there was murder in Lucian’s eye—he seemed to mean business.
‘Look here, I say, you chap!’ exclaimed Dickie, ‘put that thing down. One of us’ll be getting stuck, you know, if you go dancing about with it like that. I’ll fight you as long as you like if you’ll put up your fists, but I’m not a fool. Put it down, I say.’
‘Coward!’ said Lucian. ‘Defend yourself!’
He made at Dickie with fierce intent, and the latter was obliged to pick up the other rapier and fall into some sort of a defensive position.
‘Of all the silly games,’ he said, ‘this is——’
But Lucian was already attacking him with set teeth, glaring eyes, and a resolute demeanour. There was a rapid clashing of blades; then Dickie drew in his breath sharply, and his weapon dropped to the ground. He looked at a wound in the back of his hand from which the blood was flowing rather freely.
‘I knew you’d go and do it with your silliness!’ he said. ‘Now there’ll be a mess on the carpet and we shall be found out. Here—wipe up that blood with your handkerchief while I tie mine round my hand. We.... Hello, here they all are, of course! Now there will be a row! I say, you chap, swear it was all a lark—do you hear?’
Lucian heard but gave no sign. He still gripped his rapier and stared fixedly at Haidee and Sprats, who had run to the hall on hearing the clash of steel and now stood gazing at the scene with dilated eyes. Behind them, gaunt, grey, and somewhat amused and cynical, stood the earl. He looked from one lad to the other and came forward.
‘I heard warlike sounds,’ he said, peering at the combatants through glasses balanced on the bridge of the famous Simonstower nose, ‘and now I see warlike sights. Blood, eh? And what may this mean?’