I was far past caring what happened to me, and when the door opened and I looked up expecting to see the police with the warrant for me, I was ready to welcome this arrest as a distraction from my thoughts. Anything, anything to get away from the maddening oppressiveness of my gloom.
It was not the police, however, but the servant who brought me food.
“Don’t bring that here,” I cried, when the man set it down.
He looked at me in surprise.
“You are in great trouble, monsieur,” he said, not unkindly. “But one must eat, even in trouble.”
“I wish to God I was dead,” I exclaimed desperately; “and you talk of eating. Take it away, man, take it away, or I shall do you a mischief,” and I turned to the window and leaned my fevered head against the sash.
Helga was being pursued by these sleuth hounds and would be killed—killed for having tried to save my life—and it was I—I who had laid them upon her trail and brought destruction upon her. Already they might have struck the blow. And I could barely keep myself from moaning aloud in my impotent anguish.
Then suddenly I started. I had made a discovery.
A man came into sight in the ground below. It was one of the gardeners, and he crossed from the right until an abutment of the Palace hid him from my view on the left.
I was only two storeys from the ground, and the roof of the out-building behind which the man had been lost to sight could probably be reached from my bedroom window. Then by a curious memory freak an old joke dashed into my thoughts, and I smiled. It was the story of the man who languished in gaol for twenty years racking his brains with elaborate plans for escape, and then—opened the door and walked out.