“I am in the habit of thinking, as you should be aware. And know that I have overlooked nothing.”
“Do you mean to murder the Countess Alexia as well?” Herriard’s voice half broke as he pronounced the name, and he knew that his enemy noticed it.
“Scarcely,” Gastineau answered, with his air of superior wisdom. “If you call the circumstance of her being alive a danger, it is one that I mean to turn into a means of safety. You were good enough just now to tell me to think. Let deep thought in turn point out to shallow surmise that the very factor you have alluded to in the case is in reality one which makes your death imperative. If one may take your look for one of incredulity, I will explain.”
“If you please.” Was there no chance? Herriard was searching desperately for one as he spoke mechanically, his life passing before him in a swift panorama while he temporized with the inevitable.
Gastineau proceeded, speaking as casually as though he were telling a story in a club smoking-room. “The only person, besides myself, who knows the real truth of the affaire Martindale is the Countess Alexia. She knows it because, as you may be aware, I have told her what happened. Apart from shrewd suspicion and fairy tales, conjectures, which, as we know, go for nothing in the Law Courts, what the Countess knows is the only tangible piece of evidence which could condemn me for, say, manslaughter. There are two ways of securing myself against the appearance of the Countess in the box against me; the more agreeable of the two is to marry her. But that is at the moment impossible owing to a slight obstacle, the fact that the lady is, I believe, at present your wife. Now, perhaps you begin to take in the situation?”
Herriard’s brain was busy with futile searching for a way out of it. He at least took in his adversary’s fixity of purpose. He nodded gloomily in reply. Argument was now clearly out of the question. The resolve of a man who glories aggressively in his intellect is merely clenched by opposition.
“Then, apart from the Countess’s widowhood being a sine quâ non,” Gastineau continued, in the same cold, level tone, “there is the account of our rivalship to be settled. That has been held throughout the ages to be a more than sufficient reason for bloodshed, for a fight â outrance. There has never been room in the world, even when it was less crowded, for two lovers of the same lady. The angle of love is now acute, now obtuse; it is never a triangle.”
“It has,” Herriard retorted, “always been the world’s code in such cases for rivals to meet and settle the matter on fair and equal terms.”
Gastineau smiled.
“Not always, by any means, my dear Herriard. Your history is at fault. In fact it has almost invariably and proverbially been the custom for a rival to take any advantage that chance might offer him. Duels on so-called equal terms, for there really never was such a thing, have been resorted to only where other means of elimination were not practicable, or where one of the parties was smart and skilful, the other a chivalrous, incompetent fool. I don’t take my history from the story-books.”