Lord Tony’s Wife Baroness Orczy (story read aloud .TXT) 📖

And as Yvonne too in instinctive response to that peremptory call was further straining her every sense in order to listen, there came from somewhere, not very far away, right through the stillness of the night, a sound which caused her pulses to still their beating and her throat to choke with the cry which rose from her breast.

It was only the sound of a quaint and drawly voice saying loudly and in English:

“Egad, Tony! ain’t you getting demmed sleepy?”

Just for the space of two or three seconds Yvonne had remained quite still while this unexpected sound sent its dulcet echo on the wings of the northwesterly blast. The next⁠—stumbling in the dark⁠—she had run to the stairs even while she heard Martin-Roget calling loudly and excitedly to Paul Friche.

One reverent pause beside her dead father, one mute prayer commending his soul to the mercy of his Maker, one agonised entreaty to God to protect her beloved and his friend, and then she ran swiftly up the winding steps.

At the top of the stairs, immediately in front of her, a door⁠—slightly ajar⁠—showed a feeble light through its aperture. Yvonne pushed the door further open and slipped into the room beyond. She did not pause to look round but went straight to the window and throwing open the rickety sash she peeped out. For the moment she felt that she would gladly have bartered away twenty years of her life to know exactly whence had come that quaint and drawling voice. She leaned far out of the window trying to see. It gave on the side of the Rat Mort over against Louise Adet’s house⁠—the space below seemed to her to be swarming with men: there were hurried and whispered calls⁠—orders were given to stand at close attention, whilst Martin-Roget had apparently been questioning Paul Friche, for Yvonne heard the latter declare emphatically:

“I am certain that it came either from inside the house or from the roof. And with your permission, citizen, I would like to make assurance doubly sure.”

Then one of the men must suddenly have caught sight of the vague silhouette leaning out of the window, for Martin-Roget and Friche uttered a simultaneous cry, whilst Chauvelin said hurriedly:

“You are right, citizen, something is going on inside the house.”

“What can we do?” queried Martin-Roget excitedly.

“Nothing for the moment but wait. The Englishmen are caught sure enough like rats in their holes.”

“Wait!” ejaculated Martin-Roget with a savage oath, “wait! always wait! while the quarry slips through one’s fingers.”

“It shall not slip through mine,” retorted Paul Friche. “I was a steeplejack by trade in my day: it won’t be the first time that I have climbed the side of a house by the gutter-pipe. A moi Jean-Pierre,” he added, “and may I be drowned in the Loire if between us two we do not lay those cursed English spies low.”

“An hundred francs for each of you,” called Chauvelin lustily, “if you succeed.”

Yvonne did not think to close the window again. Vigorous shouting and laughter from below testified that that hideous creature Friche and his mate had put their project in immediate execution; she turned and ran down the stairs⁠—feeling now like an animal at bay; by the time that she had reached the bottom, she heard a prolonged, hoarse cry of triumph from below and guessed that Paul Friche and his mate had reached the windowsill: the next moment there was a crash overhead of broken window-glass and of furniture kicked from one end of the room to the other, immediately followed by the sound of heavy footsteps running helter-skelter down the stairs.

Yvonne, half-crazed with terror, faint and sick, fell unconscious over the body of her father.

Inside the taproom commandant Fleury was still at work.

“Your name?”

“Where do you live?”

“Your occupation?”

The low room was filled to suffocation: the walls lined with Marats, the doors and windows which were wide open were closely guarded, whilst in the corner of the room, huddled together like bales of rubbish, was the human cattle that had been driven together, preparatory to being sent for a trial to Paris in vindication of Carrier’s brutalities against the city.

Fleury for form’s sake made entries in a notebook⁠—the whole thing was a mere farce⁠—these wretched people were not likely to get a fair trial⁠—what did the whole thing matter? Still! the commandant of the Marats went solemnly through the farce which Carrier had invented with a view to his own justification.

Lemoine and his wife had protested and been silenced: men had struggled and women had fought⁠—some of them like wild cats⁠—in trying to get away. Now there were only half a dozen or so more to docket. Fleury swore, for he was tired and hot.

“This place is like a pesthouse,” he said.

Just then came the sound of that lusty cry of triumph from outside, followed by all the clatter and the breaking of window glass.

“What’s that?” queried Fleury.

The heavy footsteps running down the stairs caused him to look up from his work and to call briefly to a sergeant of the Marats who stood beside his chair:

“Go and see what that sacré row is about,” he commanded. “In there,” he added as he indicated the door of the landing with a jerk of the head.

But before the man could reach the door, it was thrown open from within with a vigorous kick from the point of a sabot, and Paul Friche appeared under the lintel with the aristo wench thrown over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes, his thick, muscular arms encircling her knees. His scarlet bonnet was cocked over one eye, his face was smeared with dirt, his breeches were torn at the knees, his shirt hung in strips from his powerful shoulders. Behind him his mate⁠—who had climbed up the gutter-pipe into the house in his wake⁠—was tottering under the load of the ci-devant duc de Kernogan’s body which he had slung across his back and was holding on to