“They’re loaded,” he said.  “Examine them for yourself.”

I did not move; but I took my little friend out of my pocket.

“If I’m attacked,” said I, “I shall defend myself; but I’m not going to fight a duel here, without witnesses, at the dead of night, in your house.”

“Call it what you like then,” said he; and he snatched up a pistol from the table.

He was beyond remonstrance, influence, or control.  I believe that in a moment he would have fired; and I must have fired also, or gone to my death as a sheep to the slaughter.  But as he spoke there came a sound, just audible, which made him pause, with his right hand that held the pistol raised halfway to the level of his shoulder.

Faint as the sound was, slight as the interruption it would seem to offer to the full career of a madman’s fury, it was yet enough to check him, to call him back to consciousness of something else in the world than his balked passion and the man whom he deemed to have thwarted it.

“What’s that?” he whispered.

It was the lowest, softest knock at the door—­a knock that even in asking attention almost shrank from being heard.  It was repeated, louder, yet hardly audibly.  The duke, striding on the tip of his toes, transferred the pistols from the table back to the drawer, and stood with his hand inside the open drawer:  I slid my weapon into my pocket; and then he trod softly across the floor to the door.

“One moment!” I whispered.

And I stooped and picked up the Cardinal’s Necklace and put it back where it had lain before, pushing its box under the table by a hasty movement of my foot—­for the duke, after a nod of intelligence, was already opening the door.  I drew back in the shadow behind it and waited.

“What do you want?” asked the duke.

And then a girl stepped hastily into the room and closed the door quickly and noiselessly behind her.  I saw her face:  she was my old friend Suzanne.  When her eyes fell on me, she started in surprise, as well she might; but the caution and fear, which had made her knock almost noiseless, her tread silent, and her face all astrain with alert alarm, held her back from any cry.

“Never mind him,” said the duke.  “That’s nothing to do with you.  What do you want?”

“Hush!  Speak low.  I thought you would still be up, as you told me to refill the lamp and have it burning.  There’s—­there’s something going on.”

She spoke in a quick, urgent whisper, and in her agitation remembered no deference in her words of address.  “Going on?  Where?  Do you mean here?”

“No, no!  I heard nothing here.  In the duchess’s dressing-room:  it is just under the room where I sleep.  I awoke about half an hour ago, and I heard sounds from there.  There was a sound as of muffled hammering, and then a noise, like the rasping of a file; and I thought I heard people moving about, but very cautiously.”