The Teeth of the Tiger Maurice Leblanc (best novels of all time .txt) 📖

in the motor. Don’t stand staring at me like that: I mean what I say. Two thousand francs apiece: it’s for you to earn it. Look sharp!”

He himself went up the second flight without undue haste, remaining master of himself. But, on the last stair, he was seized with such a feeling of elation that he shouted:

“Victory! The road is clear!”

The boudoir door was opposite. He opened it and repeated:

“Victory! But there’s not a second to lose. Follow me.”

He entered. A stifled oath escaped his lips.

The room was empty.

“What!” he stammered. “What does this mean? They’re gone.⁠ ⁠… Florence⁠—”

Certainly, unlikely though it seemed, he had hitherto supposed that Sauverand possessed a false key to the lock. But how could they both have escaped, in the midst of the detectives? He looked around him. And then he understood.

In the recess containing the window, the lower part of the wall, which formed a very wide box underneath the casement, had the top of its woodwork raised and resting against the panes, exactly like the lid of a chest. And inside the open chest he saw the upper rungs of a narrow descending ladder.

In a second, Don Luis conjured up the whole story of the past: Count Malonyi’s ancestress hiding in the old family mansion, escaping the search of the perquisitors, and in this way living throughout the revolutionary troubles. Everything was explained. A passage contrived in the thickness of the wall led to some distant outlet. And this was how Florence used to come and go through the house; this was how Gaston went in and out in all security; and this also was how both of them were able to enter his room and surprise his secrets.

“Why not have told me?” he wondered. “A lingering suspicion, I suppose⁠—”

But his eyes were attracted by a sheet of paper on the table. With a feverish hand, Gaston Sauverand had scribbled the following lines in pencil:

“We are trying to escape so as not to compromise you. If we are caught, it can’t be helped. The great thing is that you should be free. All our hopes are centred in you.”

Below were two words written by Florence:

“Save Marie.”

“Ah,” he murmured, disconcerted by the turn of events and not knowing what to decide, “why, oh, why did they not obey my instructions? We are separated now⁠—”

Downstairs the detectives were battering at the door of the passage in which they were imprisoned. Perhaps he would still have time to reach his motor before they succeeded in breaking down the door. Nevertheless, he preferred to take the same road as Florence and Sauverand, which gave him the hope of saving them and of rescuing them in case of danger.

He therefore stepped over the side of the chest, placed his foot on the top rung and went down. Some twenty bars brought him to the middle of the first floor. Here, by the light of his electric lantern, he entered a sort of low, vaulted tunnel, dug, as he thought, in the wall, and so narrow that he could only walk along it sideways.

Thirty yards farther there was a bend, at right angles; and next, at the end of another tunnel of the same length, a trapdoor, which stood open, revealing the rungs of a second ladder. He did not doubt that the fugitives had gone this way.

It was quite light at the bottom. Here he found himself in a cupboard which was also open and which, on ordinary occasions, must have been covered by curtains that were now drawn. This cupboard faced a bed that filled almost the whole space of an alcove. On passing through the alcove and reaching a room from which it was separated only by a slender partition, to his great surprise, he recognized Florence’s sitting-room.

This time, he knew where he was. The exit, which was not secret, as it led to the Place du Palais-Bourbon, but nevertheless very safe, was that which Sauverand generally used when Florence admitted him.

Don Luis therefore went through the entrance hall and down the steps and, a little way before the pantry, came upon the cellar stairs. He ran down these and soon recognized the low door that served to admit the wine-casks. The daylight filtered in through a small, grated spyhole. He groped till he found the lock. Glad to have come to the end of his expedition, he opened the door.

“Hang it all!” he growled, leaping back and clutching at the lock, which he managed to fasten again.

Two policemen in uniform were guarding the exit, two policemen who had tried to seize him as he appeared.

Where did those two men come from? Had they prevented the escape of Sauverand and Florence? But in that case Don Luis would have met the two fugitives, as he had come by exactly the same road as they.

“No,” he thought, “they effected their flight before the exit was watched. But, by Jove! it’s my turn to clear out; and that’s not easy. Shall I let myself be caught in my burrow like a rabbit?”

He went up the cellar stairs again, intending to hasten matters, to slip into the courtyard through the outhouses, to jump into his motor, and to clear a way for himself. But, when he was just reaching the yard, near the coach-house, he saw four detectives, four of those whom he had imprisoned, come up waving their arms and shouting. And he also became aware of a regular uproar near the main gate and the porter’s lodge. A number of men were all talking together, raising their voices in violent discussion.

Perhaps he might profit by this opportunity to steal outside under cover of the disorder. At the risk of being seen, he put out his head. And what he saw astounded him.

Gaston Sauverand stood with his back to the wall of the lodge, surrounded by policemen and detectives who pushed and insulted him. The handcuffs were on his wrists.

Gaston Sauverand a prisoner! What had happened between