hat made his words sound deliberate, "I am a
desperate man in a desperate position. Every moment that I tarry here
increases my danger and shortens my temper. If you think to temporize
in the hope of gaining an opportunity of turning the tables upon me, you
must be mad to dream that I shall permit it. Monsieur, you will at once
order those men to leave the courtyard by that doorway, or I give you my
word of honour that I shall run you through as you stand."

"That would be to destroy yourself," said Marius with an attempted note
of confidence.

"I should be no less destroyed by delay," answered Garnache; and added
more sharply, "Give the word, monsieur, or I will make an end."

From the movement behind him Marius guessed almost by instinct that
Garnache had drawn back for a lunge. At his side Valerie looked over her
shoulder, with eyes that were startled but unafraid. For a second Marius
considered whether he might not attempt to elude Garnache by a wild and
sudden dash towards his men. But the consequences of failure were too
fearful.

He shrugged his shoulders, and gave the order. The men hesitated a
moment, then shuffled away in the direction indicated. But they went
slowly, with much half-whispered, sullen conferring and many a backward
glance at Marius and those with him.

"Bid them go faster," snapped Garnache. Marius obeyed him, and the men
obeyed Marius, and vanished into the gloom of the archway. After
all, thought Monsieur de Condillac, they need go no farther than that
doorway; they must have appreciated the situation by now; and he was
confident they would have the sense to hold themselves in readiness for
a rush in the moment of Garnache's mounting.

But Garnache's next order shattered that last hope.

"Rebecque," said he, without turning his head, "go and lock them in."
Before bidding the men go that way, he had satisfied himself that
there was a key on the outside of the door. "Monsieur de Condillac,"
he resumed to Marius, "you will order your men in no way to hinder my
servant. I shall act upon any menace of danger to my lackey precisely as
I should were I, myself, in danger."

Marius's heart sank within him, as sinks a stone through water. He
realized, as his mother had realized a little while before, that in
Garnache they had an opponent who took no chances. In a voice thick with
the torturing rage of impotence he gave the order upon which the grim
Parisian insisted. There followed a silence b