"I think just as much of Joan as you!" he blazed back at the pallid man whose next step promised to lead to the grave. "I am King here, not you! Keep yourself and Joan out of harm's way, and don't interfere! Stand flat against the wall, both of you! Back, I say! There is the first axhead! Now you, who were born a lord, be ready to lord it over these groundlings!"
He whirled round on Beaumanoir, and Alec saw in his friend's hand some object, what he could not guess, while Felix carried a similar article in reserve, as it were. The little man's earnestness was so convincing that the King could not choose but believe that some scheme that offered salvation was in train. But it might fail! The door might be forced before his own desperate alternative could be adopted, and the consequences to Joan of failure were too horrible to be risked. A panel shivered into splinters and the muzzles of two revolvers frowned through the aperture.
"Wait!" bellowed Poluski; for Beaumanoir's hand was raised.
Lord Adalbert did more than wait. With the quickness born of many a hard won victory on the polo ground, his free left hand flew out and grasped the wrist behind one of the pistols. He pulled fiercely and irresistibly. An arm appeared, and a yell of pain signalized a dislocated shoulder.
The weapon exploded harmlessly and fell to the floor. A living stop gap now plugged the first hole made by the ax wielders, while the writhing body of their comrade interfered with further operations.
Beaumanoir gave an extra wrench, and his victim howled most dolorously. He slipped the bomb into his coat pocket.
"Pick up that revolver, Alec," he cried. "If it is still loaded it will help us to hold the fort."
The King rushed forward, and butted against Beaumanoir in his haste. Felix, whose skin was always sallow, became livid; but nothing happened, and he snatched the bomb from its dangerous resting place. Then he burst into a paroxysm of hysterical laughter which drowned for an instant a new hubbub in the street.
Alec, hastily examining his prize, found that three chambers were loaded. He was about to search for a crack in the door through which he could fire at least one telling shot, when his ear caught the prancing of horses on the paving stones.
Joan, thoroughly enlightened now as to their common peril, had behaved with admirable coolness since Alec implored her not to stir from the corner between door and window. She was sure they would all be killed, and her lips moved in fervent prayer that death might be merciful in its haste; but she was not afraid; that storm of tears had been succeeded by a spiritual exaltation that rescued her from any ignoble panic. Yet her senses were strained to a tension far more exhausting than the display of emotion natural to one plunged without warning into the most horrible of the many horrors of civil war, and she had heard, long before the others, the onrush of cavalry and the stampede of the mob.