"No. Shall I shoot at any one who opens?"
"Any one?—it will be Bonhomme,—no other."
Suddenly there came, from the front and the rear of the Inn, at the same instant it seemed, the sharp staccato of a fusilade of pistol shots, and the lumbering blows as of beams being thrust at distant doors.
"They are come!" she whispered, "hide." Dan could hear the swish of her garments as she rapidly glided across the room to the old cabinet, then he turned and crouched low behind the writing desk that she had chosen for his place of concealment. He knelt there motionless, a cocked pistol clenched in his right hand. His breath seemed to have stopped, but his heart was pounding as though it must burst through his breast. How could he shoot down in cold blood a fellow man? The horror of it crowded out all other impressions, sensations fears. He could fight, risk his life, but to pull the trigger of that pistol when the casement should open seemed to him an impossibility. He would wait, grapple with him, fight as men should.
Suddenly a ray of moonlight fell across the dark floor. Dan, looking up, seemed frozen by horror. The shutters had opened, the casement swung back noiselessly, and there in the opening, sharply outlined against the moonlight-flooded night, was the great black hulk of Captain Bonhomme.
For a moment he stood there irresolute, listening intently. Dan was fascinated, motionless, held as in a vice by the horror of the thing.
Suddenly Bonhomme moved his head to one side as if to listen more acutely. As he did so, the ray of moonlight fell upon the cabinet, fell upon Claire de la Fontaine, upon something that she held in an outstretched hand that gleamed.
"Nom de Dieu!" There was the flash and crack of a pistol, a sharp cry, and the great figure fell back and sank out of sight.
With that Dan sprang forward, reckless of danger, and ran to the window. He heard without the confused sounds as of persons scurrying to cover, saw their forms dash across the moonlit courtyard, into the shadows of the trees and outhouses. Beneath him on the floor of the gallery was something horrible and still.
Almost instantly Claire de la Fontaine was by his side, and as regardless of danger as he, she was calling sharply, calling men by their names. Her hair had been loosened and fell over her shoulders in black waves, her dark eyes flashed with excitement and passion, and her face, strangely pale, in the silver moonlight, was set in stern harsh lines. Even then this vision of her tragic beauty thrilled the man at her side.