shrewdness, again to use no harsher term. Even as he swore to pack his boxes and set sail for Boston when the Mary Piper next heaved anchor from the harbor of Bordeaux, he knew that he would stay till need for him in France was passed.
Through the drumming of the rain drops and the skirling of the storm wind came a cry, sharp and shrill as pain, quavering as mortal terror: "Au secours, pour l'amour de Dieu" The screamed appeal rose secant as a naked knife-blade, then stopped quite abruptly, held for eternity at its top note, as if the screamer had been throttled in mid-scream.
Mordecai looked up, eyes narrowed to the rain. A hundred feet away two figures, blurred in the driving storm, struggled with a third, and even as he sighted them he saw them drop a cloak or blanket over it and raise it between them as if it were a sack of meal or bale of merchandise.
Like everyone in Paris who was not armed with sword or knife or pistol, Mordecai bore an "executive authority"—a loaded blackthorn stick two inches thick and three feet long, secured to his wrist by a thong of raw-hide. "Halte-là!" he shouted as he charged against the leveled lances of the rain. "What goes on here?"
They met his onslaught with a countercharge. Dropping their quarry to the walk unceremoniously, they separated, one to the right, one left, and rushed at him, one with a cutlas, the other with a nine-inch dirk.
The sworded ruffian hacked a chopping blow at Mordecai. Had he used his cudgel as a guard the steel would have cleft through it, but he was no amateur with either quarterstaff or sword, and as the cutlas descended he dodged, swung back his stick and struck down savagely. The loaded bludgeon caught the poorly tempered blade mid-way between the point and hilt and snapped it short, as if it were an icicle.
"Pardi', the devil's in his elbow!" swore the disarmed footpad. "Upon him, Jacques! Give him the coup de Père Frangçois!" The loaded stick swung again and he dropped to the brick footwalk, blood streaming from his ears and nostrils.
The other bravo was not idle. Even as he struck the swordsman with his cudgel Mordecai felt himself seized from behind. An arm was round his neck, a dagger flashed, he felt a blow above his heart that all but drove the breath from him.
Had it not been for the great care which Aunt Deborah Hastings took for all her nephews' souls' welfare, he would have felt nothing, for the dagger had a needle-point and was driven by the hand of one skilled in assassination. But before he left for Paris Aunt Deborah presented him with a small volume of religious exercises, "Gems of Devotional Poetry for Occasional and Daily Use by the Rev. Japheth Higginbotham, M.A.," and made him promise he would keep it always with him while he stayed in the Gomorrah of the modern world. Mordecai's New England conscience would not let him break his promise; so into the breast pocket of his coat the Reverend Master Higginbotham's compilation of atrocious verse was thrust each morning when he set out for the office. It contained a hundred and twelve pages and was bound in full morocco and—as wickedness had aforetime met its master in the hard, uncompromising faith of old New England, so was the murderous dagger-point stopped by Master Higginbotham's poetry tonight.
