Page:Vance--Terence O'Rourke.djvu/225

 le Prince already tired, and O'Rourke, fast failing, beginning to feel the effects of his day's long tramp. The room began to whirl dizzily about them both—like a changing, hazy panorama, wherein O'Rourke was dimly conscious of pink, gaping faces filling the doorways, and the round, staring eyes of frightened and awed peasants at the windows.

And so, possibly, it was as a relief to both when, eventually, the Irishman managed to get the breadth of a table between them, and when each was free to pause and gasp for breath the while they glared one at the other, measuring each his opponent's staying powers—for to a test of sheer lasting ability it was now come. The man who should be able to keep upon his feet the longest—he was to win. And neither read "quarter" in his enemy's eyes.

As they stood thus, watching one another jealously, out of the tail of his eye O'Rourke saw the fallen officer—Charles—stir, and sit upright. He dared not take his attention from the prince, and yet he was able to note that the younger man at first stared confusedly, then staggered to his feet, and so doing, put his hand to his pistol holster.

Opportunely a curious thing occurred. A voice rang through the room loudly, cheerfully:

"The O'Rourke!" it stated explicitly. "Or Satan himself!"

All three turned, by a common impulse, toward the outer door. It framed a man entirely at his ease, dressed in the grotesque arrangement that constitutes an automobiling costume in these days, holding in his left hand the goggle mask which the driver affects. But in the other hand, level with his eye, he poised a revolver, the muzzle of which was directly trained upon him whom Prince Georges had called Charles.