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He was stooping in the act, when a quick step rang behind him on the threshold, an angry voice harsh and metallic pronounced his name: "Rebecque!" The sword clattered from Rabecque's hand suddenly gone nerveless nerveless with sheer joy, all else forgotten in the perception that there, safe and sound, stood his beloved master.
I left him awaiting me in the courtyard." The order was given, and one of the cut-throats departed. In a tense and anxious silence they awaited his return, though he kept them but an instant. Rabecque's eyes took on a startled look when he had viewed the situation. Garnache called to him to deprive those present of their weapons.
In one of his blind accesses of fury, heedless of the faithful and watchful Rabecque's arresting tug at his sleeve, he stepped forward, and brought a heavy hand down upon the supercilious gentleman's shoulder.
He realized, as his mother had realized a little while before, that in Garnache they had an opponent who took no chances. In a voice thick with the torturing rage of impotence he gave the order upon which the grim Parisian insisted. There followed a silence broken by the fall of Rabecque's heavily shod feet upon the stones of the yard, as he crossed it to do his master's bidding.
There followed a silence, disturbed only by the sound of Rabecque's laboured breathing; then came a stir outside the door of the inn; some one shouted an order. There was a movement of hoofs, a creak and crunch of wheels, and presently the rumble of a heavy carriage being driven rapidly away. But too well did Rabecque surmise what had taken place.
The beverage warmed him in body; but it would need a butt of it to thaw the misery from his soul. "Rabecque," he said with a pathetic grimness, "I think I am the most cursed blunderer that ever was entrusted with an errand." The thing so obsessed his mind that he must speak of it, if it be only to his lackey. Rabecque's sharp face assumed a chastened look. He sighed most dutifully.
A spasm of passion crossed his face, another instant and despite Rabecque's frantic proddings he might have flung the ragout in the gentleman's face; when suddenly came the landlord unexpectedly to the rescue. "Monsieur, here comes your supper now," he announced, as his wife reentered from the kitchen with a laden tray. For a moment the stranger seemed out of countenance.
But he paid no heed to them as he stalked with ringing step across the rushstrewn floor, nor observed how covertly and watchfully their glances followed him as returning, in passing the sergeant's prompt salute he vanished through the doorway leading to the stairs. He reappeared again a moment later, to call the host, and give him orders for the preparing of his own and Rabecque's supper.
"Stop them?" quoth the Seneschal. "Are you mad?" He shook off Rabecque's detaining hand, and left him, to cross the street again with ponderous and sluggish haste, no doubt to carry out his purpose of sending more troopers to the scene of the disturbance. Rabecque swore angrily and bitterly, and his vexation had two entirely separate sources.
He caught Rabecque's wrist in a grip that threatened to snap it. His face was livid, his eyes aflame. "They they " stammered Rabecque. He had not the courage to tell the thing that had happened. He feared Garnache would strike him dead. And then out of his terror he gathered an odd daring.
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