Highgate Rise - Anne Perry [127]
With a flourish Pascoe swung his cloak around his arm and threw it onto the ground in a heap, regardless of the damp. His second rushed to pick it up and held it in front of him, rather like a shield.
Dalgetty, who had no cloak, chose to keep his coat on. He flourished the stick, or whatever it was, again, and let out a cry of “Liberty!” and lunged forward at a run.
“Honor!” Pascoe shouted back, and brandishing something long and pale in his hand, ran forward as well. They met with a clash in the middle and Dalgetty slipped as his polished boots failed to take purchase on the wet grass.
Pascoe turned swiftly and only just missed spearing him through the chest. Instead he succeeded in tearing a long piece from Dalgetty’s jacket and thoroughly enraging him. Dalgetty wielded what Pitt could now see was a sword stick, and dealt Pascoe a nasty blow across the shoulders.
“Stop it!” Pitt bellowed as loudly as his lungs would bear. He was running towards them, but he was still a hundred and fifty yards away, and no one paid him the slightest attention. “Stop it at once!”
Pascoe was startled, not by Pitt but by the blow, which must have hurt considerably. He stepped back a pace, shouted, “In the name of chivalry!” and swiped sideways with his ancient and very blunt sword, possibly an ill-cared-for relic of Waterloo, or some such battle.
Dalgetty, with a modern sword stick, sharp as a needle, parried the blow so fiercely the neglected metal broke off halfway up and flew in an arc, catching him across the cheek and opening up a scarlet weal which spurted blood down his coat front.
“You antiquated old fool!” he spluttered, startled and extremely angry. “You fossilized bigot! No man stands in the path of progress! A medieval mind like you won’t stop one single good idea whose time has come! Think you can imprison the imagination of man in your old-fashioned ideas! Rubbish!” He swung his broken sword high in the air so wildly the singing sound of it was audible to Pitt even above the rasping of his own breath and the thud of his feet. It missed Pascoe by an inch, and clipped a tuft off the top of his silver head and sent it flying like thistledown.
Pitt tore off his coat and threw it over Dalgetty.
“Stop it!” he roared, and caught him across the chest with his shoulder, sending them both to the ground. The broken sword stick went flying bright in the sun to fall, end down, quivering in the ground a dozen yards away.
Pitt picked himself up and disregarded Dalgetty totally. He did not bother to straighten his clothes and dust off the earth and grass. He faced a shaken, weaponless and very startled Pascoe.
By this time Murdo had dealt with the cab driver and run across the field to join them. He stood aghast at the spectacle, helpless to know what do to.
Pitt glared at Pascoe.
“What on earth do you think you’re doing?” he demanded at the top of his voice. “Two people are dead already, God knows who did it, or why—and you are out here trying to murder each other over some idiotic monograph that nobody will read anyway! I should charge you both with assault with a deadly weapon!”
Pascoe was deeply affronted. Blood was seeping through the tear across the shoulder of his shirt and he was clearly in some pain.
“You cannot possibly do that!” his voice was high and loud.”It was a gentieman’s difference of opinion!” He jerked his hand up wildly. “Dalgetty is a desecrator of values, a man without judgment or discretion. He propagates the vulgar and destructive and what he imagines to be the cause of freedom, but which is actually license, indiscipline and the victory of the ugly and the dangerous.” He waved both arms, nearly decapitating Murdo, who had moved closer. “But I do