"Perhaps," said Dan grimly, "but go back. I take the responsibility. I do trust her, I shall trust her--to death. There is no time to lose, man. Go back!"
"What deviltry has bewitched you?" cried Tom passionately. "Already once to-night you have risked our lives by your fool-hardiness,--for the sake of this woman, eh? By gad, man, I begin to see. But I tell you now, I refuse to be a victim to your madness."
"_Mais non_, Monsieur Pembroke," Claire cried again. "By all that is good and holy, I swear to you, that that which I have said is true. You must go. They will attack the bar and the kitchen. If those places are not defended, there will be danger."
"At any rate," said Dan, "I am going into the Oak Parlour. If you refuse to act with me, barricade the door between the bar and the north wing. If need be, I shall fight alone. Only now we lose time, precious time."
Pembroke looked at him as if he had gone mad, then shrugging his shoulders he turned back into the bar, whistling for Jesse and Ezra as he did so.
For a moment, glancing after Tom's retreating figure, shaken to his soul by conflicting emotions, Dan stood irresolute.
"But come," said Madame de la Fontaine, touching his arm. Again like the weird genius of this strange night she led the way on down the shadowy hall, and paused only when her hand rested upon the knob of the door into the Oak Parlour. "It is here," she said simply.
As Dan reached her side, she opened the door. The light of the candle down the hallway did not penetrate the gloom of the disused room. A musty smell as of cold stagnant air came strong to their nostrils, and Dan felt, as they crossed the threshold together, that he was entering a place where no life had been for a long long time, a place full of dead nameless horrors.
The woman by his side was trembling violently. He put his arm about her to reassure her, and there shot through him a sensation of strange and terrible joy to be with her alone in this darkness and danger. For the moment he was exulting that for her sake he had risked his honour, that for her sake now he was risking life itself. He bent his head to hers.
"No! no!--not here!" she whispered hoarsely, but yet clinging to him with shaking hands. "It is so cold, so dark. I have fear," she murmured.