“It iss zo badt!” he whined, gulping nervously.  “It iss zo badt!”

“Right you are,” said Heywood.  With arms folded, he eyed them sternly.  “It’s bad.  We might have known.  If only I’d reached him first!  By Jove, you must let me fight that beast.  Duels?  The idiot, nobody fights duels any more.  I’ve always—­His cuffs are always dirty, too, on the inside!”

Rudolph leaned back, like a man refreshed and comforted, but his laugh was unsteady, and too boisterous.

“It is well,” he bragged.  “Pistol-bullets—­they fly on the wings of chance!  No?—­All is well.”

“Pistols?  My dear young gentleman,” scoffed his friend, “there’s not a pair of matched pistols in the settlement.  And if there were, Chantel has the choice.  He’ll take swords.”

He paused, in a silence that grew somewhat menacing.  From a slit in the wall the wheel of the punkah-thong whined insistently,—­rise and fall, rise and fall of peevish complaint, distressing as a brain-fever bird.

“Swords, of course,” continued Heywood.  “If only out of vanity.  Fencing,—­oh, I hate the man, and the art’s by-gone, if you like, but he’s a beautiful swordsman!  Wonderful!”

Rudolph still lay back, but now with a singular calm.

“It’s just as well,” he declared quietly.

Heywood loosed a great breath, a sigh of vast relief.

“My word!” he cried, grinning.  “So you’re there, too, eh?  You young Sly-boots!  If you’re another expert—­Bravo!  We’ll beat him at his own game!  Hoist with his own what-d’-ye-call-it!  I’d give anything”—­He thumped the table, and pitched the cards broadcast, like an explosion of confetti, in a little carnival of glee.  “You old Sly-boots!—­But are you sure?  He’s quick as lightning.”

“I am not afraid,” replied Rudolph, modestly.  He trained his young moustache upward with steady fingers, and sat very quiet, thinking long thoughts.  A quaint smile played about his eyes.

“Good for you!” said Heywood.  “Now let him come, as the Lord Mayor said of the hare.  What sport!  With an even chance—­And what a load off one’s mind!”

He moved away to the window, as though searching for air.  Instead of moonlight, without, there swam the blue mist of dawn.

“Not a word must ever reach old Gilly,” he mused.  “Do you hear, Nesbit?”

“If you think,” retorted the clerk, stiffly, “I don’t know the proper course of be’aviour!  Not likely!”

The tall silhouette in the window made no reply, but stood grumbling privately:  “A club!  Yes, where we drink out of jam-pots—­dead cushions, dead balls—­no veranda—­fellow that soils the inside of his cuffs first!  We’re a pack of beach-combers.”

He propped his elbows on the long sill, and leaned out, venting fragments of disgust.  Then of a sudden he turned, and beckoned eagerly.  “Come here, you chaps.  Look-see.”

The others joined him.  Gray vapors from river and paddy-field, lingering like steam in a slow breeze, paled and dispersed in the growing light, as the new day, worse than the old, came sullenly without breath or respite.  A few twilight shapes were pattering through the narrow street—­a squad of Yamen runners haling a prisoner.