The Gilded Chair: A Novel

by Melville Davisson Post

He laid the body down on the floor, closed and bolted the doors of the château, then he stooped down to examine the body. The old man seemed quite dead, but he could not at once locate the injury. He felt over the body; he looked for blood; then he put his hand under the head and the whole of the occipital bone, at the base of the skull, was soft to the touch. The man had been killed instantly by a stone or the blow of a club.

When he looked up from this examination, both Caroline Childers and the Marchesa So-derrelli were standing beside him. The girl was pressing her hands together, and jerking them in and out against her bosom. But she was not speaking a word. The face of the Mar-chesa retained its unmoving aspect of plaster. The Duke arose and spoke to the Marchesa.

"Why did you not keep her in the library? I feared this might happen."

"They are coming that way, too," she answered, "up the hill from the river."

"How many?"

"I don't know. Hundreds! I don't know." The Duke stepped swiftly to the door and looked out through one of the side windows. Groups of figures were hurrying into the service portion of the house. He turned quickly from the window and started down the corridor toward that end of the château. He had not gone a dozen steps when he stopped. Smoke met him!

It had been presently clear to the Duke of Dorset that the little party ought somehow to get out of the château. He could not hold it against this rising, especially when led by servants familiar with every door and window. He might hold a detached tower of it, or a certain passage. But to make such a stand was to put all into a corner, with every way out presently cut off. Against mere assault, such a plan was to be considered, but now, against fire, it was wholly out of the question. Moreover, no time was to be lost. The service portion of the house had already been entered and the park leading to the river occupied. The only directions offering a safe exit were on the road south, leading down through the meadow land, westward to the coast, or directly across the court, up the stone steps into the mountain. This latter seemed the better way out. But to cross the court from the door was not to be thought of; the little party would be instantly seen, and an open target over every step of the way.

The Duke returned to the window by the door. Caroline Childers was on her knees by the body of the old man, the tears were streaming down her face. The Marchesa Soderrelli walked up and down with a short nervous stride. When the Duke looked through the window, he saw instantly a way out. The wall bordering the formal gardens ran from the south wing of the château along the court; they could cross, behind the cover of that, to where the road entered. There the distance to the stone steps was short, and once on these steps the vines would screen them, and they might go unobserved into the mountain.

But this way remained only for that moment open. The vines moved and the Duke saw, indistinctly, a man standing at the bottom of these steps. He watched a moment to see if others came that way, but no others followed. The man remained alone, watching the château through the heavy border of vines. This evidently was a sentinel, and a plan, on the instant, suggested itself to the Duke of Dorset. He broke a corner out of the window with the muzzle of the rifle, thrust the barrel through, and brought the gun to his shoulder. Then a thing happened, by chance, and to the eye trivial. A black beetle, sleeping there against the sash, aroused by the breaking glass, crept over from its place onto the gun barrel; the Duke put out his hand to brush the creature out of the line of sight, but the beetle ran along the barrel to the muzzle. The Duke slipped the gun back under his arm and brushed the insect off. But he had no longer time to remain at the window.

A crashing sound, as of a door rammed with a heavy timber, echoed through the corridor.