'And if His Highness will not consent to these changes?' again demanded Colendorp.
'Then'—Elmur laid a hand on the old man's shoulder, but Sagan shook it off—'then, Captain Colendorp, he must go—to make room for another who can better fill his place! Just as Wallenloup must go to give room to another and less obstructive chief.'
Colendorp's dark eyes glared straight in front of him. Had it been Adiron—Adiron, as true a man, would have feigned agreement and blown the plot afterwards. But never Colendorp! He was narrow-minded, poor, embittered, scenting insult in every careless word, proud, loyal, desperate. Mentally his vision was limited; he could see but one thing at a time, but he saw it very large.
Sagan's treachery passed by him in that moment of mad feeling. He felt and felt only the deadly affront offered to him of all the officers of the Guard—the coarse bribe of the colonelcy dangled before his starving nose, for he alone of all the Guard had been deemed corruptible! The thought held more than the bitterness of death.
He looked from wall to wall, and knew himself an unarmed man, so he made ready to die as a soldier and a gentleman. But first he must clear his tarnished honour—tarnished with the foul proposal made to him by Count Simon of Sagan. He had passed through life a cold and, in his own sense of the word, an honourable man, disliked, feared and avoided outside his own most intimate circle. He had been driven by the irresistible destiny of character to live a lonely man, and now the strength of a lonely man was his—the strength that can make an unknown death a glory for the sake of honour, not honours. So he spoke.
'You were very good, Count Sagan, to make choice of me before all the Guard for—this!' he said in his cold voice; 'may I ask why you so favoured me?'
'Because I can read a man.'
'And you read me so? Then hear me. I take the place you have given me. I take my place as the least staunch of all the Guard. You have told me so much, unmasked so clearly what you intend to do, that, unless I fall in with your wishes, I can never hope to leave this room except feet foremost. I say this. Now see me act as the least staunch of the Guard!'
Without warning he leaped upon Sagan, hurling him backwards with the force of the sudden impact, and buried his fingers in the grey bristling beard. He had but his bare hands with which to slay the enemy of the Duke, and used them with the strength of envenomed pride. Sagan, under the iron throttling fingers snatched at his hunting-knife and stabbed fiercely upwards between the bent arms at the Guardsman's throat.
Inside the room the heavy breathing and struggling of the men on the floor seemed to Elmur loud enough to alarm the whole Castle, in spite of the furious screaming of the gale. He sprang to the writhing heap and tried to pinion Colendorp, but as he touched him the wounded man fell back. In a moment Sagan was on his feet calling on Elmur to bring the lamp. He seized Colendorp under the arm and shoved him roughly towards the wall, where throwing back a curtain he opened a door and thrust the tottering figure before him down a short flight of steps. Then another door was opened and the tsa swept in with a wild yell, for a moment holding upright the failing man who staggered out on to the snowy terrace, making a tragic centre to the flickering path of light cast by the lamp in Elmur's hand.