“It is only an interruption, madame.”
Gardel’s words—but the speaker!
I stumbled with my burden—recovered myself, and consigned the boy to the good soul that awaited him. Then hurriedly I leaned down again, and hurriedly cried, “Carinne! Carinne!”
* * * * * * *
There was no answer. Probably the speaker had retreated when the wretched Madame Kolly was withdrawn from the wall. I called again. I dwelt over the noxious gutter in excitement and anguish until I was convinced it was useless to remain. Was it this, then? that out of all the voices of France one voice could set my heart vibrating like a glass vessel that responds only to the striking of its single sympathetic note? I had thought to depose this idol of an hour from its shrine; I had cried shame upon myself for ever submitting my independence to the tyranny of a woman, and here a half-dozen words from her addressed to a stranger had reinfected me with the fever of desire.
I got out a scrap of paper and wrote thereon, “Jacob to Rachel. Jean-Louis is still in the service of Mademoiselle de Lâge.”
I found a fragment of stick, notched the paper into the end of it, and gingerly passed my billet through the hole in the wall. On the instant a great voice uttered a malediction behind me, and I was jerked roughly down upon the flags. My end of the stick dropped into the gutter and wedged itself in slime. I looked up. Above me were Cabochon and a yellow-faced rascal. This last wore a sword by his side and on his head a high-crowned hat stuffed with plumes. I had seen him before—Maillard, l’Abbaye Maillard, a hound with a keen enough scent for blood to make himself a lusty living. He and his colleague Héron would often come to La Force to count their victims before following them to the scaffold.
“Plots—plots!” he muttered, shaking his head tolerantly, as if he were rebuking a child. “See to it, Citizen Cabochon.”
The jailer fetched back the stick. The paper, however, was gone from the end of it.
“It will be in the sewer,” said Maillard, quietly.