An instant the spy stood motionless. Then, tossing his arms above his head, he fell backward and lay still.
CHAPTER XXIV
THE EMPEROR’S SPY
Although the deadly conflict was raging all about us, I passed it by to regard a still more exciting tragedy. For with a roar like that from a mad bull Mazanovitch dashed aside his captors and sprang to the spot where Valcour lay.
“Oh, my darling, my darling!” he moaned, raising the delicate form that he might pillow the head upon his knee. “How dared they harm you, my precious one! How dared they!”
Paola, struggling madly with his bonds, succeeded in bursting them asunder, and now staggered up to kneel beside Valcour. His eyes were staring and full of a horror that his own near approach to death had never for an instant evoked.
Taking one of the spy’s slender hands in both his own he pressed it to his heart and said in trembling tones:
“Look up, sweetheart! Look up, I beg of you. It is Francisco—do you not know me? Are you dead, Valcour? Are you dead?”
A gentle hand pushed him aside, and Lesba knelt in his place. With deft fingers she bared Valcour’s breast, tearing away the soft linen through which a crimson stain had already spread, and bending over a wound in the left shoulder to examine it closely. Standing beside the little group, I found myself regarding the actors in this remarkable drama with an interest almost equaling their own. The bared breast revealed nothing to me, however; for already I knew that Valcour was a woman.
Presently Lesba looked up into the little man’s drawn face and smiled.
“Fear nothing, Captain Mazanovitch,” said she softly; “the wound is not very dangerous, and—please God!—we will yet save your daughter’s life.”