Leduc and Violet looked back through the door out of which they had come. The hall was dusk, but a light was burning somewhere out of sight. They could see a couple emerge out of the passage which led to the study--Chanot pushed the Arquan in front of him. The face of the chief was calm, but of a ghastly pallor--his lips almost disappearing, so firmly were they set. His blue eyes had the dull glitter of lapis lazuli, or rather of malachite--green rather than blue. But they were not good to see. Death looked out of them, and chilled the marrow of Leduc and Violet. Not for the world would they have crossed the will of Chanot at that moment. They could see Chardon shutting the door of the study from within, and guessed that he was left there on guard, but they could not hear Chanot's courteous last words of excuse for Matteo, "I fear this gentleman is ill. He is from Italy and troubled with fever. He will be better outside. I will conduct him." "Shut the door and let no one pass," he added to Chardon, in a rapid whisper, "talk as if nothing had happened till I come back!" And the next moment he was pushing his prisoner along the corridor. Leduc and Violet saw them come, and made ready to fall in behind, but they were not prepared for what followed so swiftly. Matteo le Gaucher suddenly dropped to the floor, pulling his collar out of the grasp of his captor. Then, quick as thought, he drew a long knife from his belt and struck the deadly forward blow at Chanot--the Arquan blow below the belt for which there is no parry. But Chanot had not for nothing been President of the Athletic and Sportive Association of the Midi. He was in admirable training and his eye forestalled the Gaucher's movement. It was a fine thrust, delivered with the broad-cutting edge upward. No man, even in Arqua, could have saved himself. But Chanot had leaped aside, nimble as a cat. And the next moment the knife was stricken from the Arquan's hand. There was a wild, fierce struggle there on the threshold, the movements of the combatants being so quick that Leduc and Violet dared not interfere lest they should harm the wrong man. Biting, kicking, and scratching, Matteo le Gaucher was shoved out across the gravel, over the lawn and into a little _clairiere_ upon which shone directly the beam of Hugh Deventer's electric installation up on the heights of Mont St. Andre.