She sank into a chair and covered her face with her hands. She was not crying. This was a sorrow too deep for tears.
Suddenly Onslow darted forward. The girl, too, sprang up. A horse’s hoofs, several horses’ hoofs, clattering furiously on the stones of the deserted Carrefour could be heard distinctly for those who had ears to hear.
“Miserable libertine!” she cried, in a terrible voice, “assassin! Your hour has come as I told you it would. You will not leave this house alive, and I am glad, very glad. Stand back!” she said peremptorily, and she had whipped out a pistol. “The doors are locked, all of them. Dear God! I could slay you with my own hands, but it is not necessary.”
She had swiftly stolen behind the curtains. There was a moment’s pause while Onslow in vain tried to force the door by which he had entered. There was a crash, a wrench, and then the curtains were drawn back.
“Monsieur le Vicomte de Nérac—Monsieur George Onslow,” the girl said quietly, as if she were introducing two gentlemen in a lady’s salon. She had flung the window open and André, sword in hand, was standing in the room, looking about him half dazed but triumphant.
“That man there,” she proceeded in her tearless voice, pointing at Onslow, “is an English spy. In his pocket is the secret despatch of Madame de Pompadour which you seek. He is the assassin, by his own confession, of the Chevalier de St. Amant, and he has also a valuable letter in the handwriting of the Comte de Mont Rouge. Monsieur le Vicomte, you will deal with him as and how you please, but if you have any pity for the blood of the man who sent you to this place you will have no mercy for a coward, a libertine, and an assassin. Adieu!”
She had swiftly unlocked one of the side doors, glided through it, and relocked it from the other side, leaving Onslow and André face to face.
CHAPTER XXIX
ANDRÉ FAILS TO DECIDE
Onslow had the advantage of André in his intimate knowledge of the essential facts of the situation; and he had not been for ten years an agent of the secret service, in daily peril of his life, in hourly need of having to decide at once on a course of action, without learning all that an able and desperate man can learn from pitting his wits against the wits of men and women as unscrupulous and desperate as himself.
“Good-evening, Vicomte,” he now said, bowing politely. “I could not have wished for a more opportune meeting. As a proof, there are my pistols,” he tossed them ostentatiously on to the table.