"Only the key of the tower door," absently replied Lee. "But," he went on, again keenly glancing over Rumsey's figure: "it takes two to a fair fight—and a pair of weapons. Where is yours?"
"Hadn't I my choice of twoscore at least out of the toys there?" said Rumsey after an instant's silence, and pointing to the oaken chest. "If you doubt it look for yourself. A real embarrassment of riches, eh?" he went on, watching Lee's face, as he lifted the lid of the chest and stood gazing at its gleaming contents. "Enough to do for a score of lives if one had 'em. But the best of us has but one in this bad world," he continued, piously turning up his eyes; "and Providence has spared me, as you see, from the sword of the ungodly. I'd have given my best firelock, though, it had not happened;" and for once Rumsey spoke pure and simple truth. "The fellow had his faults, but I had a great respect for him."
"And is that what sent you clearing off in such a hurry?" asked Lawrence, turning contemptuously from Rumsey, and kneeling down beside Goodenough's motionless body he set his lantern on the floor, and the key beside it, and raised the wounded man's head; "and leaving him in this state?"
"Well, you see—" but here a violent fit of coughing interfered with Colonel Rumsey's powers of articulation. "Hang that open window!" he said, when speech at last returned; "'tis enough to give a man his death," he went on, as he closed the pane with such violence that the draught from it extinguished the dying flame of the lamp. "It was—h'm—h'm—it was awkward, don't you see, being found here, with—with no one to tell the tale but myself, as it were; for dead men tell none," he added with a low chuckle.
"He's not dead," said Lawrence, placing his hand on Goodenough's heart.
"Bah! dead as a door-nail. I'm mightily sorry for it, to be sure; but the fellow brought it on himself. What could I do? Necessity knows no law."
In the dark.
And Rumsey, stooping down over Lee as if to scrutinize the countenance lying pillowed on the young man's arm, contrived to let his hand drop well over the key upon the floor. Then clutching the ring of the lantern, he paused and repeated his observation. "Take my word for it. He's dead as a door-nail. Good-night, Master Lee. I'll leave you to explain matters, if it's all the same to you."
Lee looked up. Absorbed in his efforts to staunch the flow of blood from Goodenough's wound, he had hardly heard Rumsey's last words. As, however, he raised his head the door fell softly to, and he found himself in total darkness.