“You had better help the lieutenant, sergeant; he will need all the men he can have.”
In this way I got rid of him and his men also, and I shut the door again, with a fervent sigh of thankfulness that my imposture had not been detected. I had caught the lieutenant eyeing me curiously more than once during the short colloquy; but I concluded that he took me for one of the officers who had been drafted in from the provincial regiments for the grim work of that night. And probably my air and tone of authority had stopped him from putting any questions which I should have found exceedingly hard to answer.
Whatever his reasons, I had succeeded in bluffing him, even at the very moment when I had given up all as lost; and my hopes began to rise that even in the teeth of all this force and despite the anger of the mob, Gatrina would be saved.
“We’ll make for the garden at once,” I said; and we passed through the room with the French window opening on to the garden, and hurried to the stables.
As we passed we could hear the troops clearing the street amid the expostulations and cries of the crowd, as they were swept on toward the front.
Until now Gatrina had not spoken to me, but we had to wait while the way was cleared and we stood side by side and a little apart from the rest.
“You have run a terrible risk, Mr. Bergwyn,” she said.
“I have been in no danger; and we shall get away all right.”
“What has happened at the Palace?”
“I don’t know. I got wind of this intended arrest of you and came here in the hope of intercepting the soldiers. As I was on my way, a very large body of troops, some hundreds of men, passed me marching on the Palace; and afterwards I heard the sound of firing. But what occurred after that I have no knowledge whatever.”