Page:Vance--Terence O'Rourke.djvu/388

 with the instantaneous effect of the vanishing of a kinetoscopic picture.

For a moment O'Rourke waited, holding the revolver ready, expecting any moment to see De Brissac rise from the ground and attempt a re-entrance to the hall.

Nothing of the sort happened, however. The silence and quiet without continued unbroken, save for the sighing of the wind. It struck O'Rourke as a curious fact that he had not heard the sound of the fall. A dread thought entered his brain, and took possession of his imagination, and he paled with the horror of it.

Slowly he picked up the sword, and he cautiously advanced again to the threshold of the door. Then he unsheathed the weapon and poked about in the blackness with the scabbard, holding the revolver poised to repel an attack, should one come—as he half hoped.

None came. Abruptly O'Rourke threw the empty scabbard into the darkness, listening to catch the clank of it upon the bridge of which, De Brissac had spoken.

There was no sound.

The Irishman's heart seemed to cease its pulsations for a full minute; and then, far, far below him, he heard a faint, ringing clash.

So! That, then, had been the fate prepared for him by Duke Victor and De Brissac—that sudden plunge into a fathomless void, with a sure, swift death waiting at the end of his flight!

Faint and sick with disgust, trembling as with a vertigo, reeling and swaying like a drunkard, O'Rourke managed to close the door, and stagger a dozen yards or so away; and then, for a long time, he stood with one forearm to the wall, supporting his brow, the while he shuddered with sympathy