Again, for the third time, Gaspard's snarling voice broke on his ear. "Oh, thou fool! See him stand like a lump! Pig! Do you not know that the master is busy with his books? A moment more and all is lost! Crush that ball, or you are a dead man!"
His words spurred Oliver to sudden action. He raised the globe high in the air, and flung it upon the floor with all his force. It burst with a flash of light and a report like a pistol, and instantly the air was filled with a pungent, reddish vapor.
The next instant, as the thunder follows the flash of lightning, there came a dull, heavy rumbling, as from the cellar, and the floor swayed beneath Oliver's feet, as though the house were toppling. He looked around; the door-way at which Gaspard had stood was empty; the clever servant was gone.
Then suddenly a confusion of sounds broke upon the stillness of the house: struggles and scuffles, snarling of voices, and squeaking as though of rats, the rattle and crash of furniture pushed about, thumping and banging as of people wrestling and falling against the doors. The next instant there was a sound of a heavy fall, a shrill, long-drawn, quavering scream, and then the lull of dead silence.
Oliver stood like a statue, listening, as though he had been turned to stone. He heard a door open, and then the sound of footsteps, and a strange clacking and clattering upon the stairs without; a heavy panting and breathing. Oliver ran to the door and looked up the stairs. Gaspard was coming down out of the black gloom above. Over his shoulders he carried something limp, like an empty skin or a bundle of clothes tied together. Part of what he carried he dragged clattering down the steps behind him; another part, a round lump the size of a man's head, hung down over his shoulder, wagging from side to side. The next moment the clever servant had come into the square of light from the open door-way of the room. That light fell full upon the round lump that hung wagging from his shoulder, and in the one instant of passing, Oliver saw a dreadful, a hideous face, ashy-white, and with eyes rolled, one upward and one downward, so that only a rim of the pupils showed. The jaws gaped and clapped as the head wagged from side to side. It was the face of the Count de St. Germaine.