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A moment later the paper was snatched from his hand, and a red-faced unkempt scoundrel yelled in his face: "Spy of the devil! English thief!" Then he rose quickly and stepped back to the wall, feeling for the spring in the sword-stick which he held closely pressed to his side. This same sword-stick had been of use to him on the Fly River in New Guinea.
"I don't think I could have kept the brigands at bay much longer. A sword-stick is no match for a pair of Corsican daggers. The next time I take a walk I must have a revolver. Is that fellow dead, do you think? If he is, I shall be still more in your debt." I looked at the prostrate man's face, then at his head. "No," I said, "there is no fracture. He is only stunned."
He took a childish pleasure, as a younger brother might, in the formidable sword-stick which Flambeau always flung as he walked, and which now stood upright beside his tall mug of Munich. Nay, in his sleepy irresponsibility, he even found himself eyeing the knobbed and clumsy head of his own shabby umbrella, with some faint memories of the ogre's club in a coloured toy-book.
And he held out, under the rays of the lamp, the sword-stick he had picked up in the Calle San Gregorio. She looked at it and then at him with startled eyes. "Of course," she said. "It is the sword-stick I sent papa for the New Year. You ordered it yourself from Toledo. See, here is the crest. Where did you get it? Do not mystify me. Tell me quickly is he here? Has he come home?"
At length, comte Jean appeared, armed with a small sword-stick and pistols in his pocket, with every other precaution necessary for undertaking so perilous an adventure.
It happened to be the envelope of the letter he had received a few days earlier, denying him his recall. And Deulin carefully wiped the blade of the sword-stick with it. He tore it into pieces and sent it after the knife. Then he polished the bright steel with his pocket-handkerchief, from the evil point to the hilt, where the government mark and the word "Toledo" were deeply engraved.
At length, comte Jean appeared, armed with a small sword-stick and pistols in his pocket, with every other precaution necessary for undertaking so perilous an adventure.
"As a matter of fact, everything is ready for me on this table," he said, "and the ceremony will probably be the shortest possible." Syme also strolled across to the table, and found lying across it a walking-stick, which turned out on examination to be a sword-stick, a large Colt's revolver, a sandwich case, and a formidable flask of brandy.
A moment later the paper was snatched from his hand, and a red-faced unkempt scoundrel yelled in his face: "Spy of the devil! English thief!" Then he rose quickly and stepped back to the wall, feeling for the spring in the sword-stick which he held closely pressed to his side. This same sword-stick had been of use to him on the Fly River in New Guinea.
In the end simplicity, in the shape of a hammer and sword-stick, won the day. An assistant was taken in the person of Lucien Fenayrou, a brother of Marin. This humble and obliging individual, a maker of children's toys, regarded his brother the chemist with something like veneration as the gentleman and man of education of the family.
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