Page:Stanley Weyman--Count Hannibal.djvu/57

Rh “See you my answer to that!” And turning on the threshold, “Within there!” he cried. “Open the shutters and set lights, and the table! Light, I say; light! And lay on quickly, if you value your lives! And throw open, for I sup with your mistress to-night, if it rain blood without! Do you hear me, rogues? Set on!”

He flung the last word at the quaking servants; then he turned again to the street. He saw that the crowd was melting, and, looking in Tignonville’s face, he laughed aloud.

“Does Monsieur sup with us?” he said. “To complete the party? Or will he choose to sup with our friends yonder? It is for him to say. I confess, for my part,” with an awful smile, “their hospitality seems a trifle crude, and boisterous.”

Tignonville looked behind him and shuddered. The same horde which had so lately pressed about the door had found a victim lower down the street, and, as Tavannes spoke, came driving back along the roadway, a mass of tossing lights and leaping, running figures, from the heart of which rose the screams of a creature in torture. So terrible were the sounds that Tignonville leant half swooning against the door-post; and even the iron heart of Tavannes seemed moved for a moment.

For a moment only: then he looked at his companion, and his lip curled.

“You’ll join us, I think?” he said, with an undisguised sneer. “Then, after you, Monsieur. They are opening the shutters. Doubtless the table is laid, and Mademoiselle is expecting us. After you, Monsieur, if you please. A few hours ago I should have gone first, for you, in this house”—with a sinister smile—“were at home! Now, we have changed places.”

Whatever he meant by the gibe—and some smack of an evil jest lurked in his tone—he played the host so far as to urge his bewildered companion along the passage and into