“No, I didn’t kill him,” Simon sneered.  “Wake up a little more, Duchaine.  Do you know what happens now he is dead?”

“I expect you to get some more money, Simon,” answered the old man with an ingenuousness that made the reply more stinging than any intended irony.

Leroux burst into a mirthless laugh.

“You are quite right, Duchaine,” he answered.  “And I am not going to mince matters.  I have a hold over you, and you will do my bidding.  You will assign your share to me as your son-in-law.”

I saw Jacqueline looking at me.  I would not meet her gaze, but at last her persistence compelled me.  Then I saw her glance toward the wall.

The two broadswords hung there, within arm’s reach, above the broken mirror.  My heart leaped up at the thought of her valour.  She had no mind to yield!

But I shook my head imperceptibly in answer, and looked down at my bonds.

“I don’t want you to marry my daughter, Simon,” said old Duchaine mildly.  “I saw you strike her in the face just now.  No gentleman would do that.  Come, Simon, you know you are not a gentleman; you ought not to think of such a thing.  Jacqueline would not be happy with you.  What does she say?”

“I don’t care what she says,” snarled Leroux.  “I will take care of that.”

I had been trying hard to devise some method of freeing myself.  My struggles had relaxed the ropes around my wrists sufficiently to allow my hands two or three inches of movement, and I hoped, by hard work, to loosen them sufficiently to enable me to get at least one hand free.

Then I felt that something hard was pressing into my back, just within reach of my right thumb and forefinger.  My fur coat, which was still round me, was twisted, so that the inside breast-pocket was behind me, and I fancied that the hard object was something that I had placed in this receptacle.

I let my thumb and finger travel up and down it.  It had the form of a tiny knife, with a heavy, rounded handle.

And suddenly I knew what it was.  It was the knife with which Louis d’Epernay had been killed!

I must have put it in my breast-pocket at some time, intending to throw it away, and it had slipped through a hole in the lining and gone down as far as the next ridge of fur, where it had become wedged.

I could just get my finger and thumb round the point of the blade.  The ropes scored deeply into my wrists as I worked at it, but I felt the lining give, and presently I had worked the blade through and had the knife out by the handle.

But it was made for thrusting more than cutting, and I had to pick the ropes to pieces, strand by strand.

Jacqueline had been imperceptibly edging away from her father and Leroux; she was now standing immediately beneath the rusty swords.  And outside the door I still perceived Lacroix, motionless.

It flashed across my mind that he understood the girl’s desperate ruse, and that he was waiting for the issue.  I picked furiously at the ropes which bound my hands, and a long strand uncoiled and whipped back on my wrist.