of doubt had suddenly gathered there. Her signature!
Hers! "Roses of Venus, she is mine, mine!" He pressed his lips to the
inken line. Fortune indeed favored him . . . or was it the devil?
Hers! She was his; here was a sword to bend that proud neck. Ten
thousand livres? There was more than that, more than that by a hundred
times. Passion first, or avarice; love or greed? He would decide that
question later. He slipped the paper into the pocket of the cloak.
Curiosity drew him toward the drawer again. There was an old
commission in the musketeers, signed by Louis XIII; letters from Madame
de Longueville; an unsigned _lettre-de-cachet_; an accounting of the
revenues of the various chateaus; and a long envelope, yellow with age.
He picked it out of the drawer and blew away the dust. He read the
almost faded address, and his jaw fell. . . . "To Monsieur le Marquis
de Perigny, to be delivered into his hands at my death."

He was not conscious how long a time he stared at that address. Age
had unsealed the envelope, and the man in the grey cloak drew out the
contents. It was in Latin, and with some difficulty he translated it.
. . . So rapt was he over what he read, so nearly in a dream he knelt
there, that neither the sound of a horse entering the court nor the
stir of activity in the armory held forth a menace.

"Good God, what a revenge!" he murmured. "What a revenge!"

Twice, three times, and yet again he drank of the secret. That he of
all men should make this discovery! His danger became as nothing; he
forgot even the object of his thieving visit.

"Well, Monsieur?" said a cold, dry voice from the threshold.

The man in the grey cloak leaped to his feet, thrusting the letter into
the pocket along with the cabal. His long rapier snarled from its
scabbard, just in time. The two blades hung in mid air.

"Nicely caught," said the cold, dry voice again. "What have you to
say? It is hanging, Monsieur, hanging by the neck." The speaker was a
man of sixty, white of hair, but wiry and active. "Ha! in a mask, eh?
That looks bad for you. You are not a common thief, then? . . . That
was a good stroke, but not quite high enough. Well?"

"Stand aside, Monsieur le Comte," said the man in the cloak. His tones
were steady; all his fright was gone.

The steel slithered and ground.

"You know me, eh?" said the old man, banteringly. His blade ripped a
hole in the cloak. "You have a voice that sounds