“Can do.”

The long-coated boy scuffed away, across the chunam floor, and disappeared in the darkness.  Heywood submitted his head once more to the nimble hands of his groom, who, with horse-clippers and a pair of enormous iron shears, was trimming the stubborn chestnut locks still closer.  The afternoon glow, reflected from the burnt grass and white walls of the compound, struck upward in the vault-spaces of the ground floor, and lighted oddly the keen-eyed yellow mafoo and his serious young master.

Nesbit, pert as a jockey, sat on the table swinging his feet furiously.

“Sturgeon would take it all right, of course,” he said, with airy wisdom.  “Quite the gentleman, he is.  Netch’rally.  No fault of his.”

“Not the least,” Heywood assented gloomily.  “Did everything he could.  If I were commissioned to tell ’em outright—­’The youngster can’t fence’—­why, we might save the day.  But our man won’t even listen to that.  Fight’s the word.  Chantel will see, on the spot, directly they face.  But will that stop him?  No fear:  he’s worked up to the pitch of killing.  He’ll lunge first, and be surprised afterward.—­So regrettable!  Such remorse!—­Oh, I know him!”

The Cockney fidgeted for a time.  His face—­the face of a street-bred urchin—­slowly worked into lines of abnormal cunning.

“I say!  I was thinking,” he ventured at last.  “Two swords, that’s all?  Just so.  Now—­my boy used to be learn-pidgin at Chantel’s.  Knows that ’ouse inside out—­loafs there now, the beggar, with Chantel’s cook.  Why not send him over—­prowling, ye know—­fingers the bric-a-brac, bloomin’ ass, and breaks a sword-blade.  Perfectly netch’ral.  ’Can secure, all plopah,’ Accident, ye know.  All off with their little duel.  What?”

Heywood chuckled, and bowed his head to the horse-clippers.

“Last week,” he replied.  “Not to-day.  This afternoon’s rather late for accidents.  You make me feel like Pompey on his galley:  ’This thou shouldst have done, and not have spoken on’t,’—­Besides, those swords belonged to Chantel’s father.  He began as a gentleman.—­But you’re a good sort, Nesbit, to take the affair this fashion.”

Lost in smoke, the clerk grumbled that the gory affair was unmentionable nonsense.

“Quite,” said Heywood.  “We’ve tried reasoning.  No go.  As you say, an accident.  That’s all can save the youngster now.  Impossible, of course.”  He sighed.  Then suddenly the gray eyes lighted, became both shrewd and distant; a malicious little smile stole about the corners of his mouth.  “Have-got!  The credit’s yours, Nesbit.  Accident:  can do.  And this one—­by Jove, it won’t leave either of ’em a leg to stand on!—­Here, mafoo, makee finish!”

He sprang up, clapped a helmet on the shorn head, and stalked out into the sunlight.

“Come on,” he called.  “It’s nearly time.  We must pick up our young Hotspur.”

The clerk followed, through the glowing compound and the road.  In the shade of the nunnery gate they found Rudolph, who, raising his rattan, saluted them with a pale and stoic gravity.