As Sheldon looked at him the thought came to his mind that after all there might be something in the other’s wild adventures over the earth. It required a man of that calibre, a man capable of obtruding a duel into orderly twentieth century life, to find such wild adventures.
“There’s only one way to stop me,” Tudor went on. “I can’t insult you directly, I know. You are too easy-going, or cowardly, or both, for that. But I can narrate for you the talk of the beach—ah, that grinds you, doesn’t it? I can tell you what the beach has to say about you and this young girl running a plantation under a business partnership.”
“Stop!” Sheldon cried, for the other was beginning to vibrate and oscillate before his eyes. “You want a duel. I’ll give it to you.” Then his common-sense and dislike for the ridiculous asserted themselves, and he added, “But it’s absurd, impossible.”
“Joan and David—partners, eh? Joan and David—partners,” Tudor began to iterate and reiterate in a malicious and scornful chant.
“For heaven’s sake keep quiet, and I’ll let you have your way,” Sheldon cried. “I never saw a fool so bent on his folly. What kind of a duel shall it be? There are no seconds. What weapons shall we use?”
Immediately Tudor’s monkey-like impishness left him, and he was once more the cool, self-possessed man of the world.
“I’ve often thought that the ideal duel should be somewhat different from the conventional one,” he said. “I’ve fought several of that sort, you know—”
“French ones,” Sheldon interrupted.
“Call them that. But speaking of this ideal duel, here it is. No seconds, of course, and no onlookers. The two principals alone are necessary. They may use any weapons they please, from revolvers and rifles to machine guns and pompoms. They start a mile apart, and advance on each other, taking advantage of cover, retreating, circling, feinting—anything and everything permissible. In short, the principals shall hunt each other—”
“Like a couple of wild Indians?”