"Gervais! This is horrible!"
"Horrible, perhaps, but inevitable. Himself he has invited it. I
am a man in despair, the fugitive of a lost cause. That man holds
the keys of escape. And, besides, between him and me there is a
reckoning to be paid."
His hand came from beneath the coat at last, and it came armed with
a pistol.
Mme. de Plougastel screamed, and flung herself upon him. On her
knees now, she clung to his arm with all her strength and might.
Vainly he sought to shake himself free of that desperate clutch.
"Therese!" he cried. "Are you mad? Will you destroy me and
yourself? This creature has the safe-conducts that mean our
salvation. Himself, he is nothing."
From the background Aline, a breathless, horror-stricken spectator
of that scene, spoke sharply, her quick mind pointing out the
line of checkmate.
"Burn the safe-conducts, Andre-Louis. Burn them at once - in the
candles there."
But Andre-Louis had taken advantage of that moment of M. de La Tour
d'Azyr's impotence to draw a pistol in his turn.
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