“Enter,” she called. “Enter, Captain Statham, the door is not bolted.”
Captain Statham! They had met again and not in the salon of a woman of pleasure. André laughed aloud.
The latch was being lifted. It was now or never. Twisting his cloak round his left arm as the Spaniard does in a duel with knives, in a trice André, sword in hand, was over the table with the spring of a cat. When he had punished this traitress he would deal with Captain Statham. But the woman was too quick for him. The legs of the table met him in the stomach and sent him staggering back. Through the sickening pain he could hear her soft laugh of victorious contempt. A crash. She had hurled the lamp to the floor and was past him, missing his sword point by just half an inch. The blade quivered in the woodwork. Half-mad, he grabbed at her mask—it came off—but she was gone.
“We shall meet again,” she called, “your business and mine I hope does not end here.” A spurt of flame shot into his eyes. The oil of the exploded lamp had set the dry, rotten timbers ablaze and the kitchen was alight. Quick as thought André hurled himself after the girl. She had doubled to the right—there was another door as he guessed leading to the back—she was through it and he after her, snatching at her figure in the pitchy darkness. For two seconds he held her cloak—she twisted out of it—and he fell back with a curse against the wall. She had escaped.
And now the flame from the kitchen revealed Captain Statham standing in the front doorway, stupefied, his eyes glaring like a madman’s. With a cry he flung himself on André. A cold pain in his left arm—André was stabbed—but this was no moment for vengeance, only for flight, for on his escape hung the safety and honour of France. He rushed into the open at the back. To find his horse—to find his horse!
“I have seen her,” he heard Statham cry as he whipped round the cabin. It would be a race across the clearing now, for Statham’s companion must be waiting on the other side, and in the roar of flame it would be as light as day in this grisly thicket. What if his horse were not there? Two to one then. Bah! should he turn to meet them as it was? No, the papers—the papers first—vengeance would follow later.
For one second André crouched behind the hut. Ah! there was his horse—there was the other officer twenty paces off. Could he do it? He must.
“Jésu!” came the words in the voice of George Onslow as André doubled round the corner, “it is the Vicomte, Statham; we are betrayed. This way for God’s sake—ha!”
Crack went Onslow’s pistol. André had leaped across the clearing. He had missed, but the flash almost singed André’s hair.
One slash of his sword and his horse was free.