CHAPTER XXII—THE IRON POT
|The Duke turned instantly.
"This way," he said, "through the house to the garden."
At the word the Marchesa caught Caroline Childers by the arm, and hurried with her through the corridor; the Duke followed. They crossed the south wing of the château; through picture galleries; through corridors, beautified by innumerable human fingers, hung with paintings worth the taxes of a province, decked with bits of wood, bits of ivory, cut curiously by masters who sat over that one work for a lifetime.
Finally they came to a last drawing-room, opening from the south tower of the château into the Italian garden. Its west windows, hung with curtains, looked out over the turf court. They hurried through this chamber out onto the terrace, and from there halfway along the wall of the Italian garden, running here beside the south border of the court.
The situation south of the château was curiously puzzling. The gardens, lying in terraces, one below the other, had not been entered; the road, too, running south was clear. But beyond the gardens, in the meadow land to which the road descended, tiny groups of figures moved out from the river as though stretching a cordon that way, westward toward the mom-tains. But no group advanced, from this direction, toward the château. The situation gave a minute's respite.
The Duke of Dorset, in that respite, again considered the avenues of escape, and that way up the mountain, under cover of the vines, seemed the only one remaining. The mob was evidently advancing wholly from the east; spreading from the stone bridge on the north, through the park, and on the south, through the meadows. The mountain, due west, was perhaps clear, except for the one man whom the Duke had just discovered among the vines. If that man were out of the way, then, doubtless, the whole of the steps to the top would be open. The man could not be seen from the garden, but he could be seen from the west windows of the drawing-room through which they had just passed. Moreover, the shot would better be fired from there so that the report of the rifle would indicate that they were still in the château. The Duke explained the plan in a dozen words. The Marchesa Soderrelli understood at once and assented.
The Duke knew that little time remained to him. At any moment those entering the house on the north might come out into this garden. He ran to the drawing-room, entered it, and crossed quickly to a window looking out over the turf court. He drew aside the curtain, and stepped in behind it with his rifle. But he came now on the heels of chance. The heavy vines at the foot of the stairway moved. The lighter tendrils above were shaking. The man, whom he had come to kill, was going up the stone steps hidden by the leaves.