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Updated: June 9, 2025
The little old reader had quietly disappeared, leaving them a vacant table. "Isn't he weird?" laughed Heywood, as they sat down. "Comes and goes like a ghost." "It is his Chinese wife," declared Chantel, preening his moustache. "He is always ashame to meet the new persons." "Poor old chap," said Heywood. "I know feels himself an outcast and all that. Humph! With us! Quite unnecessary."
Netch'rally. No fault of his." "Not the least," Heywood assented gloomily. "Did everything he could. If I were commissioned to tell 'em outright 'The youngster can't fence' why, we might save the day. But our man won't even listen to that. Fight's the word. Chantel will see, on the spot, directly they face. But will that stop him? No fear: he's worked up to the pitch of killing.
Chantel laughed, without merriment; Rudolph flung down his cards, stalked to the window, and stood looking out, in lonely, impotent rage. A long time passed, marked by alarming snores from the billiard-table. The half-naked watchers played on, in ferocious silence. The night wore along without relief. Hours might have lapsed, when Dr. Chantel broke out as though the talk had but paused a moment.
Rudolph, dizzy with pain and suspense, nursed his forearm mechanically. The hurried, silver ring of the hilts dismayed him, the dust from the garden path choked him like an acrid smoke. Suddenly Chantel, dropping low like a deflected arrow, swooped in with fingers touching the ground. On "three feet," he had delivered the blow so long withheld. The watchers shouted. Nesbit sprang up, released.
By every circumstance, I'm the natural proxy. Besides" the young man appealed to the company, smiling "besides, what a pity to postpone matters, and spoil the occasion, when Doctor Chantel has gone to the trouble of a clean shirt." The doctor recoiled, flung up a trembling arm, and as quickly dropped it.
Chantel drummed on Heywood's long table, and smiled quaintly, with eyes which roved out at window, and from mast to bare mast of the few small junks that lay moored against the distant bank. He bore himself, to-day, like a lazy cock of the walk. The rest of the council, Nesbit, Teppich, Sturgeon, Kempner, and the great snow-headed padre, surrounded the table with heat-worn, thoughtful faces.
"I've a great mind, myself, to run after the bounder and kick him. But that sort of thing you did enough. Who'd have thought? You young spitfire! Chantel took you on, exactly as he wanted." The fat sleeper continued to snore. Wutzler came slinking back from his refuge in the shadows. "It iss zo badt!" he whined, gulping nervously. "It iss zo badt!" "Right you are," said Heywood.
Chantel laughed heartily, and stretched his legs at ease under the table. "What strategy!" he chuckled, preening his moustache. "Your mythical siege it will be brief! For me, I vote no to that: no rice-Christians filling their bellies eating us into a surrender!" He made a pantomime of chop-sticks. "A compound full, eating, eating!" One or two nodded, approving the retort.
It was very graceful, the tapering, three-cornered blade, with shallow grooves in which blood was soon to run, the silver hilt where his enemy's father had set, in florid letters, the name of "H.B. St. A. Chantel," and a date. How long ago, he thought, the steel was forged for this day. "It is Fate." He looked up sadly. "Come, show me how to begin; so that I can stand up to him." "Here, then."
He made a sudden startling gesture, like a man who has lost control. "For the sake," he cried angrily, "of a person we all know! Oh! we all know her! She is nothing more " There was a light scuffle at the window. "Dr. Chantel," began Heywood, with a sharp and dangerous courtesy, "we are all unlike ourselves to-night. I am hardly the person to remind you, but this club is hardly the place "
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