“My good Herriard,” said the scoffing voice through the curl of those hateful lips, “you are hopelessly stupid. What did you think? That you could snuff out Paul Gastineau by holding him against the wall?” He laughed. Herriard saw the glint of the steel raised to strike. He had no breath to struggle; the tense, cruel fingers gripped his throat mercilessly, the weight of Gastineau’s body was on his chest.
“Gastineau, for God’s sake——” he gasped, and all the reply was a laugh.
“So you know I did for Martindale,” he heard the words through the buzzing of the compressed blood in his ears. “Dangerous knowledge. Too dangerous to live.”
Gastineau moved slightly backward to strike. Herriard gave a stifled cry in the agony of death. Then through the rooms there sounded the startling noise of a sharp knocking at the outer door.
With every sense strung to its acutest point, Herriard heard it and made a desperate effort to call out; but the hand on his throat tightened, and the cry was abortive. Then, for a few seconds, dead silence followed. Gastineau was thinking, planning with that swift brain of his; determining which course to take of the urgent choice before him. Life and death were in the wavering balance, and Herriard lay watching the cruel face as the indicator of which side the scale of his existence dropped. Then came another knocking, and Herriard with a tremendous effort partially freed himself and sent forth a great half-strangled cry. Next instant he was released, for Gastineau had sprung to his feet, and stood for the moment irresolute. Herriard rose now, and shouted; what he knew not. But the shout seemed to determine Gastineau. He took the key from his pocket, unlocked the door and went out. Herriard, steadying himself, followed warily into the lobby. Gastineau was not to be seen. The outer door stood ajar. It opened wider now to admit a man’s form. Herriard sprang forward with a cry, and, to his inexpressible relief, found himself confronted by Count Prosper von Rohnburg.
CHAPTER XXIII
THE WAYS OF MAYFAIR
“THEY say,” announced Dormer Greetland, with the seriousness befitting an important pronouncement, “that Countess Alexia is going to marry Herriard.”
“One is scarcely surprised to hear it,” Lady Rotherfield commented in a non-committal tone. Having once got down on the wrong side of the fence, she had climbed up again to her perch, and was disposed to sit there and argue that her rash descent had not been altogether unwise. “But is it true?”
“Quite proper,” laughed the shrill voice of Baron de Daun, “that Perseus should marry Andromeda. It is true? Of course it is the natural thing for people to say.”
“I have it on the best authority,” was the Mayfair newsman’s somewhat vague reply. “Naturally it was the first thing we should be told. But one would hardly accept the banal chatter of irresponsible outsiders. No, dear lady, you will find it authentic now. I might have told you the news a fortnight ago, but then it was merely in the air. To-day——” He gave a shrug as though they would discredit his imprimatur at their peril.