CHAPTER XLV

THE MEETING

Bob Malcolm came to see me early in the morning with news that the count’s cartel had been delivered in form.  He told me that I might as well fight the Grand Duke—­“For if you kill, Frank, if you kill,” says he, “you’ll be in a fortress for life; and if you don’t kill, why, then you’re a dead man.  Body of a dog, as they say here, you’re a dead man either way.”  Good Bob was much put about.

I did my best to hearten him.  I said that I would take the risk of Volterra, as I had taken it before, and should do my best to kill the count.  He was, I said, a lying blasphemer whose death would be an act of justice.  Malcolm whistled.

“This is a devilish sharp-set affair,” says he; “for that is just how the marchese put his man’s frame of mind.  He stipulates, it seems, that you fight to the death.  Look out for him too, Frank,” he added.  “He is dangerous.  I never liked him; and to-day he looked like a sick wolf.”

“Who is your marchese?” I asked without interest.

“Semifonte,” says Bob, “and as mad as a March hare.”  I got up at once.  I said, “I shall kill Count Giraldi.”

We met in the Cascine at six o’clock of a foggy morning; the light bad, the ground heavy from a night’s rain.  The marchese wore black, I remember, and looked horrible; a wan, doomed face, a mouth drawn down at one corner, a slavered, untidy red beard; and those wide fish-eyes of his which seemed to see nothing.  Count Giraldi bore himself gallantly, as he always did.  I was extremely cool.

We stripped and faced each other, the swords were produced and measured; we saluted, and the count at once began a furious attack.  I think that on any ordinary occasion he would have proved the better man; he was fully as strong as myself, and as good in the wind—­for he lived temperately; and he had had more experience.  But to-day, as I soon discovered, he was flurried and made mistakes; twice in the first five minutes I could have disarmed him, and once I very nearly had his life.  He was foolhardy to an extraordinary degree; his eyes were unsteady; it seemed to me that he was thinking of something else; and before we had been long engaged I discovered that he was thinking of two things, the first, his own certain death, the second, the state of mind of the Marchese Semifonte.  My finding out of the second of these made me resolute to bring about the first of them; otherwise, so wildly was he at work I don’t believe I could have brought myself to kill such a tyro as he was proving.