CHAPTER IX
It lacked but a minute of the stroke of twelve, and the revels at "TheTwisted Arm"--wild at all times, but wilder to-night than ever--were attheir noisiest and most exciting pitch. And why not? It was not oftenthat Margot could spend a whole night with her rapscallion crew, and shehad been here since early evening--was to remain here until the dawnbroke grey over the house-tops and the murmurs of the workaday worldawoke anew in the streets of the populous city. It was not often thateach man and each abandoned woman present knew to a certainty that he orshe would go home through the mists of the grey morning with a fistfulof gold that had been won without labour or the taking of any personalrisk; and to-night the half of four hundred thousand francs was to bedivided among them.
No wonder they had made a carnival of it, and tricked themselves out ingala attire; no wonder they had brought a paste tiara and crownedMargot--Margot, who was in flaming red to-night, and looked a devil'sdaughter indeed, with her fire-like sequins and her red ankles twinklingas she threw herself into the thick of the dance and kicked, andwhirled, and flung her bare arms about to the lilt of the music and thefluting of her own happy laughter.
"Per Bacco! The devil's in her to-night!" grinned old Marise, theinnkeeper, from her place behind the bar, where the lid of thesewer-trap opened. "She has not been like it since the cracksman brokewith her, Toinette. But that was before your time, _ma fille_. Mother ofthe heavens! but there was a man for you! There was a king that wasworthy of such a queen. Name of disaster! that she could not hold him,that the curse of virtue sapped such a splendid tree, and that she couldtake up with another after him!"
"Why not?" cried Toinette, as she tossed down the last half of herabsinthe and twitched her flower-crowned head. "A kingdom must have aking, _ma mere_; and Dieu: but he is handsome, this Monsieur GastonMerode! And if he carries out his part of the work to-night he will beworthy of the homage of all."
"'If' he carries it out--'if'!" exclaimed Marise, with a lurch of theshoulders and a flirt of her pudgy hand. "Soul of me! that's where thedifference lies. Had it been the cracksman, there would have been no'if'--it were done as surely as he attempted it. Name of misfortune! Ihad gone into a nunnery had I lost such a man. But she--"
The voice of Margot shrilled out and cut into her words. "Absinthe,Marise, absinthe for them all--and set the score down to me!" she cried."Drink up, my bonny boys; drink up, my loyal maids. Drink--drink tillyour skins will hold no more. No one pays to-night but me!"
They broke into a cheer, and bearing down in a body upon Marise, threwher into a fever of haste to serve them.
"To Margot!" they shouted, catching up the glasses and lifting themhigh. "_Vive la Reine des Apaches! Vive la compagnie!_ To Margot! ToMargot!"
She swept them a merry bow, threw them a laughing salute, and drank thetoast with them.
"Messieurs, my love--mesdames et mademoiselles, my admiration," shecried, with a ripple of joy-mad laughter. "To the success of theApaches, to the glory of four hundred thousand francs, and to the quickarrival of Serpice and Gaston!" Then, her upward glance catching sightof the musicians sipping their absinthe in the little gallery above, sheflung her empty glass against the wall behind them, and shook withlaughter as they started in alarm and spilled the green poison when theydodged aside. "Another dance, you dawdlers!" she cried. "Does Marise payyou to sit there like mourners? Strike up, you mummies, or you payyourselves for what you drink to-night. Soul of desires!"--as themusicians grabbed up their instruments, and a leaping, lilting,quick-beating air went rollicking out over the hubbub--"a quadrille, youangels of inspiration! Partners, gentlemen! Partners, ladies! Aquadrille! A quadrille!"
They set up a many-throated cheer and flocked out with her upon thefloor; and in one instant feet were flying, skirts were whirling,laughter and jest mingling with waving arms and kicking toes, and thewhole place was in one mad riot of delirious joy.
And in the midst of this there rolled up suddenly a voice crying, asfrom the bowels of the earth, "Hola! Hola! La la! loi!" the cry of theApache to his kind.
"Mother of delights! It is one of us, and it comes from the sewerpassage--from the sewer!" shrilled out Marise, as the dancers halted andMargot ran, with fleet steps, towards the bar. "Listen! listen! Theycome to you, Margot--Serpice and Gaston. The work is done."
"And before even Clodoche or von Hetzler have arrived!" she repliedexcitedly. "Give them light, give them welcome. Be quick!"
Marise ducked down, loosened the fastenings of the trap-door, flung itback, and, leaning over the gap with a light in her hand, called downinto the darkness, "Hola! Hola! La! la! loi! Come on, comrades, comeon!"
The caller obeyed instantly. A hand reached up and gripped the edge ofthe flooring, and out of the darkness into the light emerged the figureof a man in a leather cap and the blue blouse of a mechanic--a pale,fox-faced, fox-eyed fellow, with lank, fair hair, a brush of ragged,yellow beard, and with the look and air of the sneak and spy indeliblybranded upon him.
It was Cleek.
"Clodoche!" exclaimed Marise, falling back in surprise.
"Clodoche!" echoed Margot. "Clodoche--and from the sewers?"
"Yes--why not?" he answered, his tongue thick-burred with the accent ofAlsace, his shifting eyes flashing toward the huge window behind thebar, where, in the moonlight, the narrow passage leading down to thedoor of "The Twisted Arm" gaped evilly between double rows of scowling,thief-sheltering houses. "Name of the fiend! Is this the welcome yougive the bringer of fortune, Margot?"
"But from the sewer?" she repeated. "It is incomprehensible, _cher ami_.You were to pilot von Hetzler over from the Cafe Dupin to the squarebeyond there"--pointing to the window--"to leave him waiting a momentwhile you came on to see if it were safe for him to enter; and now youcome from the sewer--from the opposite direction entirely!"
"Mother of misfortunes! You had done the same yourself--you, Lantier;you, Clopin; you, Cadarousse; any of you--had you been in my boots," hemade answer. "I stole a leaf from your own book, earlier in the evening.Garotted a fellow with jewels on him--in the Rue Noir, near the MarketPlace--and nearly got into 'the stone bottle' for doing it. He was adecoy, set there by the police for some of you fellows, and there was asergeant de ville after me like a whirlwind. I was not fool enough toturn the chase in this direction, so I doubled and twisted until it wassafe to dive into the tavern of Fouchard, and lay in hiding there.Fouchard let his son carry a message to the count for me, and will guidehim to the square. When it grew near the time to come, Fouchard let medown into the sewer passage from there. Get on with your dance--silenceis always suspicious. An absinthe, Marise! Have Gaston and Serpicearrived yet with the rest of the document, Margot la reine?"
"Not yet," she answered. "But one may expect them at any minute."
"Where is the fragment we already possess?"
"Here," tapping her bodice and laughing, "tenderly shielded, _mon ami_,and why not? Who would not mother a thing that is to bring one fourhundred thousand francs?"
"Let me see it. It must be shown to the count, remember. He will take norisks, come not one step beyond the square, until he is certain that itis the paper his Government requires. Let me have it--let me take it tohim--quick!"
She waved aside airily the hand he stretched toward her, and danced intothe thick of the resumed quadrille.
"Ah, non! non! non!" she laughed, as he came after her. "The conditionswere of your own making, _cher ami_; we break no rules even amongourselves."
"Soul of a fool! But if the count comes to the square--he is due therenow, mignonne--and I am not there to show him the thing--Margot, for thelove of God, let me have the paper!"
"Let me have the sign, the password!"
Cleek snapped at a desperate chance because there was nothing else todo, because he knew that at any moment now the end might come.
"'When the purse will not open, slit it!'" he hazarded,desperately--choosing, on the off-chance of its correctness, thepassword of the Apache.
&
nbsp; "It is not the right one! It is by no means the right one!" she madereply, backing away from him suddenly, her absinthe-brightened eyesderiding him, her absinthe-sharpened laughter mocking him. "Yourthoughts are in the Bois, _cher ami_. What is the password of thebrotherhood to the cause of Germany, stupid? It is not right, non! non!It is not right!"
The cause of Germany! At the words the truth rushed like a flash ofinspiration across Cleek's mind. The cause of Germany! What a dolt hewas not to have thought of that before! There was but one phrase everused for that among the Kaiser's people, and that phrase--
"'To the day!'" he said, with a burst of sudden laughter. "My wits arein the moon to-night, _la reine_. 'To the day,' of course--'To theday!'" And even before she replied to him, he knew that he had guessedaright.
"Bravo!" she said, with a little hiccough--for the absinthe, of whichshe had imbibed so freely to-night, was beginning to take hold of her."A pretty conspirator to forget how to open the door he himself locked!It is well I know thee--it is well it was the word of les Apaches in thebeginning, or I had been suspicious, silly! Wait but a moment!"--puttingher hand to her breast and beginning to unfasten her bodice--"wait but amoment, Monsieur Twitching-Fingers, and the thing shall be in yourhand."
The strain, the relief, were all too great for even such nerves asCleek's, and if he had not laughed aloud, he knew that he must havecheered.
"Oho! you grin because one's fingers blunder with eagerness," hiccoughedMargot, thinking his laughter was for the trouble she had in getting thefastenings of her bodice undone. "Peste, monsieur! may not a lady wellbe modestly careful, when--Name of the devil! what's that?"
It was the note of a whistle shrilling down the narrow passagewithout--the passage where Dollops, in Apache garb, had been set onwatch; and, hearing it, Cleek clamped his jaws together and breathedhard. A single whistle--short and sharp, such as this one was--was thesignal agreed upon that the real Clodoche was coming, and that he andCount von Hetzler had already appeared in the square beyond.
"Soul of a sloth! Will not that hurry you, _la reine_?" he saidexcitedly, in reply to Margot's startled question. "It is the signalFouchard's son was to give when he and von Hetzler arrived at the placewhere I am to meet them. Give me the paper--quick! quick! Tear thefastenings, if they will not come undone else. One cannot keep a vonHetzler waiting like a lackey for a scrap of ribbon and a bit of lace."
"Pardieu! they have kept better men than he waiting many an hour beforethis," she made reply. "But you shall have the thing in a twinkling now.There! but one more knot, and then it is in your hands."
And, had the fates not decreed otherwise, so, indeed, it would havebeen. But then, just then, when another second would have brought thepaper into view, another moment seen it shut tight in the grip of hisitching fingers, disaster came and blotted out his hopes!
Without hint or warning, without sign or sound to lessen the shock ofit, the trap-door behind the bar flew up and backward with a crash thatsent Marise and her assistants darting away from it in shrieking alarm;a babel of excited voices sounded, a scurry of rushing feet scuffled andflashed along the shaking floor, and Merode and his followers tumbledhelter-skelter into the room.
Cleek, counting on the bolt which kept them from entering the passagefrom the corridor of the Chateau Larouge--forcing them to take a long,roundabout journey to "The Twisted Arm"--had not counted on theirshortening that journey by entering the passage from Fouchard's tavern,doing, in fact, the very thing which he had declared to Margot hehimself had done. And lo! here they were, howling and crowding abouthim--dirks in their hands and devils in their eyes and hearts--and thepaper not his yet!
A clamour rose as they poured in; the dancers ceased to dance; the musicceased to play; and Margot, shutting a tight clutch on the loosened partof her half-unfastened bodice, swung away from Cleek's side, and flew ina panic to Merode.
"Gaston!" she cried, knowing from his wild look and the string of oathsand curses his followers were blurting out that something had goneamiss. "Gaston, _mon coeur_! Name of disaster! what is wrong?"
"Everything is wrong!" he flung back excitedly. "That devil--thatrenegade--that fury, Cleek, the cracksman, is here. He came to therescue--came out of the very skies--and all but killed Serpice!"
"Cleek!" Fifty shrill voices joined Margot's in that screaming cry;fifty more dirks flashed into view. "Cleek in France? Cleek? Where ishe? Which way did he go? Where's the narker--where--where?"
"Here, if anywhere!"
"Here?"
"Yes--unless you've been fooled, and let him get away. He knows aboutthe paper, and is after it, Margot; and if anyone has come up from thesewers within the past twenty minutes--"
They knew--they grasped the situation instantly--and a roar of excitedvoices yelled out: "Clodoche! Clodoche! Clodoche!" as, snarling andhowling like a pack of wolves, they bore down with a rush on theblue-bloused figure that was creeping towards the door.
But as they sprang it sprang also! It was neck or nothing now. Cleekrealised it, and, throwing himself headlong over the bar, clutchedfrantically at the lever which he knew controlled the flow of gas,jammed it down with all his strength, shut off the light, and, grabbingup a chair, sent it crashing through the window.
The crowd surged on towards the wrecked bar with a yell, surged from alldirections, and then abruptly stopped and huddled together in one. Forthe sudden flashing down of the darkness within, had made moreprominent, the moon-lighted passage without; and there, scuttling awayin alarm from this sudden uproar, and the outward flying of that hurledchair, a figure which but a moment before had come skulking to thewindow, could now be seen.
"There he goes--there! there!" shrilled out a chorus of excited voices,as the yellow-bearded, blue-bloused figure came into view. "After him!Catch him! Knife him!"
In an instant they were at the door, tumbling out into the darkness,pouring up the passage in hot pursuit. And it was at that moment thebalance changed again. Those who were in the front rank of the pursuerswere in time to see a lithe, thin figure--dressed as one of their ownkind--spring up in the path of that other figure, jump on it, grip it,clap a huge square of sticky brown paper over the howling mouth of it,and bear it, struggling and kicking, to the ground.
In another second they, too, were upon it--swarming over it like rats,and digging and hacking at it with their dirks. And so they were stillhacking at it--although it had long since ceased to move, or to make anysound--when Merode came up and called them to a halt.
"Drag it inside; let Margot have a thrust at it--it is her right. Pulloff the dog's disguise, and bring me the plucky one that captured him.He shall have absinthe enough to swim in, the little king! Off with itall, Lanchere. First, the plaster--that's right. Now, the wig and beard,and after that--What's that you say? The beard is real? The hair isreal? They will not come off? Name of the devil! what are you saying?"
"The truth, _mon roi_, the truth! Mother of disasters! It is not thecracksman--it is the real Clodoche we have killed!"
For one moment a sort of panic held them, swayed them, befogged thebrains of them; then, of a sudden, Merode howled out, "Get back! Getback! The fellow's in there still!" and led a blind race down thepassage to the bar, where they had seen Cleek last. It was still indarkness; but an eager hand gripping the lever, turned on the gas again,and matches everywhere were lifted to the jets.
And when the light flamed out and the room was again ablaze they knewthat they might as well hope to call back yesterday as dream of findingCleek again. For there on the floor, her limp hands turned palms upward,a chloroformed cloth folded over her mouth and nose, lay, in a deepstupor, the figure of Margot, her bodice torn wide open and the paperforever gone!
* * * * *
It was five minutes later when the Count von Hetzler, crouching back inthe shadow of the square and waiting for the return of Clodoche, heard adull, whirring sound that was unmistakably the purr of a motor throbthrough the stillness; and, leaning forwa
rd, saw an automobile whirl upout of the darkness, cut across the square, and dash off westward like aflash. Yet in the brief instant it took to go past the place where hewaited there was time for him to catch the sharp click of a loweredwindow, see the clear outlines of a man's face looking out, and to heara voice from within the vehicle speak.
"Herr Count," it said in clear, incisive tones. "A positively infalliblerecipe for the invasion of England: Wait until the Channel freezes andthen skate over. Good night!"
"One for his nob that, Gov'nor--my hat, yuss!" said Dollops, with ashrill laugh, as he stuck a red head and a face all shiny with cocoabutter and half-removed grease-paint out of the window, and, despite thefact that the swift pace of the automobile had already carried it farpast the place where the count had been in hiding, made a fan of hisfive fingers and his snub nose. "Oh, Mother 'Ubbard! Did you see him,sir? Bunked back in his 'ole like somebody had 'give him the hook,' andcleared the blessed stage before the eggs began to fly. I don't thinkthem Germans 'ull be sittin' on the steps of St. Paul's this year,sir--not them!"
Cleek laughed; and, ordering the boy to shut down the window and get onwith the work of changing his clothes, set about doing the same thinghimself.
"I suppose you know, you clever little monkey, that I should have beenfloating down the Seine with a slit throat and enough lead in me to sinka barrel by this time, if it hadn't been for you," he said, as he pushedthe outward semblance of Clodoche into the kit-bag, and began to getinto ordinary civilian's dress as expeditiously as possible. "If you hadslipped up--if you had been one-half minute late--or if that fellow hadhad a chance to make one cry before you covered his mouth--"
"Please, sir--_don't_!" interposed Dollops, with a sort of shiver. "Ifanythink had've happened to you, Gov'nor ..." Then stopped short andmade a sound as if he were swallowing something, and then grew very,very still.
Cleek looked at him out of the corner of his eye--moved in spite ofhimself--hesitated a moment and then, obeying an impulse, leaned overand gently tapped him on the shoulder.
"Dollops, shake hands," he said.
"Sir!"
"Shake hands."
"Gawd, Gov'nor! You don't never _mean_ that, sir?"
"Shake hands," said Cleek for the third time. "Do you know, you littlemonkey, that you're the only soul in all God's world that could evermuster up a tear for me? Thank you, my lad--you're a brick!"--thengripped the grimy hand that was reached out with a sort of awe, wrung itheartily, patted the astonished boy on the shoulder; and fell towhistling merrily as he went on with his dressing.
"Sir, you do lick me, you fair do," said Dollops, laughing unsteadily,and drawing his sleeve across his eyes. "Arfter wot you've been and wentthrough, a-sittin' there and whistlin' as merry as can be--like as iflife was all beer and skittles, and you hadn't a care in the world."
"I haven't--for the minute, my lad," said Cleek with a laugh of utterhappiness. "Beer and skittles? Lord, it's all roses my boy, roses! I'vehad the good luck to accomplish a thing that's going to give me--well,at least one moment in Paradise--and when a man has a prospect like thatin view ..." His voice trailed off; he laughed again; then fell towhistling once more--noisily, joyously, as if some schoolboy sort ofmadness was in his blood to-night--and was still whistling when theautomobile pulled up sharply in front of the Hotel du Louvre.