Читать книгу The Iron Mistress - Paul Iselin Wellman - Страница 51

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In the blackness, Contrecourt crouched and felt behind him with his hand for the wall ... something substantial and reassuring.

They had locked the door. Outside, somewhere, they stood waiting—Dominique, Malot, and the rest.

He took a firmer grip on his sword hilt and wondered where the other was in that room. This was darkness. Six inches before his nose he could not discern his hand.

All at once Contrecourt began to regret that he had elected to use the sword in this madman’s combat.

With the sword one could keep a knife wielder at a distance and kill—but only if one could see. How to use it when one was blind? In this blackness all his trained lethal skill went for naught.

Contrecourt could face death with bravery: had done so often. But this ... this was outside of, and beyond, experience. The skin prickled on his back. His shirt was wet with sweat: the sweat of nervousness and fear.

He held his breath, trying to hear the breathing or any soft movement of his enemy there in the inky dark. But though he held it until his lungs seemed bursting, no faint whisper of sound came to his straining ears.

Where was that cursed Américain? From what direction would he come? Contrecourt suppressed an instinct to whip his sword wildly about him to keep off the creeping peril: because the sound of the blade slashing the air would betray his position.

Minutes passed, trembling like hours. How long had they been here ... half an hour? Why, oh, why, did not that fiend move, or do something—anything? Contrecourt wanted to curse—to curse Dominique You, and Malot, and his own seconds who had trapped him into this. But he dared not even whisper.

He became even more tense. It was not a sound ... so much as the beginning of a mere guess of where a sound was. Frantically, he stabbed in that direction. Only emptiness.

At once he was fearful that the slight rustle of his movement might have told his position.

He listened. Silence was absolute. Only the thumping of the pulse in his own ears seemed unnaturally loud.

Nom de Dieu! To be penned up like this—a polished master of sword—with an Américain savage——

He must find a corner. If he could find a corner, with his back in it, the sword would have much greater chance to hold off that silent, inexorable enemy. Perhaps if he moved silently enough the other might grope toward the place he had just quitted and thus reveal himself.

With infinite care, Contrecourt began the stealthy withdrawal. His body was bent, his sword half extended before him. In their silk stockings his feet moved slowly and softly, not sliding but lifted and placed, touched barely on the floor at first and then gradually set down. It seemed the pounding of his heart must be heard more than any sound of movement he made.

To move three feet required an unconscionable time. Still no sound. Still the impenetrable night blackness of the windowless room with its walls of thick stone.

The corner ... the corner. He reached out a careful, inquiring hand. This must be the corner ...

With a scream he desperately whipped the blade of his sword around in the dark.

Too late. The other was inside his guard.

There was a sudden dreadful pain in Contrecourt’s side and then the blackness of eternity, of death. It was no blacker than the dueling room where he fell with the knife in his heart.