Unless something happened, he felt that in another moment he must shriek aloud. He stopped and listened. Somewhere near him he felt sure he could distinguish the sound of breathing. It was not the heavy, regular to-and-fro respiration of unconscious sleep, but rather the quicker and shorter breathing of one who has recently undergone severe exertion, and whose heart still runs fast ahead.
Wat stood and listened. The sound came from half-way up the stairs, out of a room with a door which opened wider than the others, and which now stood, gaping black and ominous, directly before him. Wat could hear the sound of feet behind him, cautiously shuffling on the flags of the doorway, and by this sign he knew that his three ruffians were there waiting for him with the weapons of their trade naked and deadly in their hands. He was trapped, taken between the brutal, dastard butchers behind him and the unknown but more terrible breathers in the dark above him.
Yet his very desperation brought a compensating calmness. He pressed his arm against his side, where, in an inner pocket, he carried the papers he had come to deliver. He undid the button of his cloak, and let it fall to the ground to clear his sword-arm. Then, bending forward like a runner straining to obtain good pace at the start of a short race, he went up the stairs steadily and warily till he had reached the door of the room. His candle was almost blown out with the quickness of his motion. It flickered low, and then caught again, as Wat stepped nimbly within, and made the point of his sword circle about him to clear himself a space against attack.
Then he looked around him. He found himself in a wide, low-ceilinged room, with many small windows along the side. A curtain of arras hung at one end, and a table stood in front of it – a hall of rustic assembly, as it seemed. At the far side of the table from him and between its edge and the curtain, calm as though it had been broad day, sat a tall, thin man. He had red hair and a short red beard, both liberally sprinkled with gray. His eyes were of a curious China blue, pale and cold. He was clad in a French uniform, and a pair of pistols and a drawn sword lay on the table before him.
The man sat perfectly still, with his elbows on the table and his chin on the knuckles of the hands which were joined beneath his beard. His eyes were alive, however, and surveyed Wat Gordon from head to foot. The effect of this scrutiny upon the man in the chair was somewhat surprising.
He started half-way to his feet, and so disturbed the table behind which he sat that one of the pistols rolled off and fell underneath, so that the butt appeared on the side nearest to Wat. At the noise the arras behind was disturbed, and Lochinvar felt that unseen eyes were watching and unseen ears listening behind its shelter.
Wat, on his side, was not less astonished. For at the first glance he knew the man at the table.
"Jack – Jack Scarlett?" he stammered, half holding out and half withholding his hand, as to a friend met unexpectedly in more than doubtful circumstances. The man nodded without appearing to notice the outstretched hand, and continued to look the young man over with the pale, piercing eyes of blue.
"Then you are the officer of the prince appointed to receive my despatches?" cried Wat, when words came back to him.
The man whom Wat had called Jack Scarlett shook his head.
"With another I might pretend it," he said, "but not with you, Lord of Lochinvar. Now do I see that Barra plots deeper and yet more simply than I had given his Highland brains credit for. I little knew that the cavalier whom I was to meet to-night was Wat Gordon, mine ancient scholar and good ally."
"It pleases you to speak riddles with your tongue, John," replied Walter, "you that were wont to strike so strong and straight with the blade of steel. You that know me well, mine old master of the fence, I beseech to speak plainly and riddle to me no more."
Scarlett never took his blue eyes off Lochinvar's face as he spoke.
"We are here, my Lord of Lochinvar, in the matter of a most serious conference," he said; "therefore, do not stand there fixed and forwandered in the midst of the floor. Set your candle on a sconce and be seated."
Wat shook his head.
"There are too many perils behind me and before," he replied; "I must have light and room to guard my head ere I can sit or talk with you or any man, seeing that my life is not my own so long as my commission remains unfulfilled."
Scarlett knocked three times loudly on the board in front of him.
In a moment the arras stirred behind, and a man-at-arms appeared. He was clad in a pale-blue uniform, unlike any that Wat had seen in the army of the States-General.
"Bring lights," said Scarlett to him in French.
In a few minutes the room was fully illumined by the rays of half a dozen candles set in a pair of silver candlesticks, each of them holding three lights.
Then Scarlett pointed Wat to a chair.
"Surely you will do me the honor to be seated now," he said, courteously.
Wat replied by picking up a cross-legged stool of black oak and setting it down at the angle of the room, at the point most distant from the arras, and also from the door by which he had entered. Then he sat down upon it, still holding his sword bare in his right hand, and made the point of it play with the toe of his buff leathern riding-boot, while he waited impatiently for Scarlett to speak.
The man at the table had never once removed his eyes from Lochinvar's face. Then in a quiet, steady, unhurried voice he began to speak:
"You have not forgotten, my Lord of Lochinvar – "
At the repetition of the title Walter stirred his shoulders a little disdainfully.
"I say again, my Lord of Lochinvar has not forgotten – my lord has every right to the title. It was given to his ancestors by the grandfather of his present majesty – "
"His present majesty?" said Walter, looking up inquiringly.
"Aye," replied Scarlett, with some apparent heat, "His Most Gracious Majesty James the Second, King of Great Britain and Ireland. Since when did Walter Gordon of Lochinvar need to stand considering who has the right to be styled his lawful king?"
And the keen, cold eyes glinted like steel blades in the candle-light.
"It was in fencing and not in loyalty that I took lessons from you, John Scarlett," replied Lochinvar, haughtily, looking with level brows at the red-bearded man across the table, who still leaned his chin on the tips of his fingers. "I pray you, say out your message and be done."
"But this is my message," Scarlett went on, "which I was commanded to deliver to the man whom I should meet here in the inn of Brederode. You are the servant of King James, and his messages and commands are yours to obey."
Wat Gordon bowed stiffly. "In so far," he said, "as they do not conflict with my orders from my superior officers in the service of the Prince of Orange, in whose army I am at present a humble soldier."
"You are indeed a soldier in the Scottish Guards, which were raised in that country by permission of King James, and by him lent to his son-in-law, the Stadtholder of Holland. But surely the commands of your king are before all; before the mandates of Parliament, before the commands of generals – aye, before even the love of wife and children."
And the sonorous words brought a fire into the cold eyes of the speaker and an answering erectness into the pose of Wat Gordon, who had hitherto been listening listlessly but watchfully as he continued to tap the point of his riding-boot with his sword-blade.
"I have yet to hear what are the commands of his majesty the king," said Wat, lifting his hat at the name.
Scarlett tossed a sealed paper across the table, and as Wat rose to take it he kept a wary eye on the two chief points of danger – the division in the arras and the door, behind which, as he well knew, were stationed those three worthy gentry of my Lord Barra's retinue, Haxo the Bull, the Calf, and the Killer.
Wat took the paper with his left hand, broke the seal, and unfolded it by shaking it open with a quick, clacking jerk. It read thus:
It is my command that John Scarlett, Lieutenant of the Luxemburg Regiment