in fluently
in the purest and foulest argot of Belleville--which is not in the
French vocabulary of the doughboy. The animals at the pole caught fire
of this madness and ran away in good earnest, that wretched barouche
rolled and pitched like a rudderless shell in a crazy sea, the two men
floundered in its well like fish in a pail.

They fought by no rules, with no science, but bit and kicked and gouged
and wrenched and struck as occasion offered and each to the best of his
ability. Duchemin caught glimpses of a face like a Chinese devil-mask,
hideously distorted with working features and disfigured with smears of
soot through which insane eyeballs rolled and glared in the moonlight.
Then a hand like a vice gripped his windpipe, he was on his back, his
head overhanging the edge of the floor, a thumb was feeling for one of
his eyes. Yet it could not have been much later when he and his
opponent were standing and swaying as one, locked in an embrace of
wrestlers.

Still, Duchemin knew as many tricks of hand-to-hand fighting as the
other, perhaps a few more. And then he was, no doubt, in far better
condition. At all events the fellow was presently at his mercy, in a
hold that gave one the privilege of breaking his back at will. A man of
mistaken scruples, Duchemin failed to do so, but held the other
helpless only long enough to find his hip-pocket and rip out the
pistol--a deadly Luger. Then a thrust and a kick, which he enjoyed
infinitely, sent the brute spinning out to land on his head.

The fall should have broken his neck. At the worst it should have
stunned him. Evidently it didn't. When Duchemin had scrambled up to the
box, captured the reins and brought the nags to a stop--no great feat
that; they were quite sated with the voluptuousness of running away and
well content to heed the hand and voice of authority--and when,
finally, he swung them round and drove back toward the cirque, he saw
no sign of his Apache by the roadside.

So he congratulated himself on the forethought which had possessed him
of the pistol. Otherwise the assassin, since he had retained sufficient
wit and strength to crawl into hiding, could and assuredly would have
potted Monsieur Duchemin with neither difficulty nor compunction.

Not five figures but four only were waiting beside the cirque when,
wheeling the barouche as near the group as the lay of the ground
permitted, he climbed down. A man lay at length in the coarse grass,
his head