“I don’t remember much after that till I found myself bound to that stone pillar in the cellar,” said Bruce. “I think somebody struck me on the head with a club as I stumbled into the passage.”
“And I heard you groan!” exclaimed Frank.
“Well, it has turned out pretty well, even though Brattle escaped. He’ll meet his just deserts pretty soon.”
“That is certain,” nodded Frank. “But now I most desire to see the Man Without a Name and thank him for what he has done. He has promised that I shall see him again.”
CHAPTER VIII.
THE BLACK BROTHERS.
Paris at night, three days later.
Frank Merriwell was strolling along the Avenue de l’Opera, which was lighted as brightly as a ballroom. On either hand were rows and clusters of tables, where men and women were sitting in the open air, sipping their cool drinks and chatting animatedly. It was like walking the floor of a long dining-room. This, Frank told himself, was one of the pleasures of Paris at night. Nowhere else in the world could such a spectacle be seen. The promenaders of the boulevards were patrolling the avenue. They were men whose main ambition in life seemed to be to acquire reputations as boulevardiers, reputations easily obtained by persistently patrolling certain streets at certain hours day after day, week after week, month after month.
About it all there was something strictly and solely Parisian. In Paris alone could one so quickly imbibe the feeling of utter freedom and so quickly fling aside all sensation of restraint and unfamiliarity. At least, so thought Frank just then, as he swung along the avenue, light-hearted, buoyant, careless. To Merry it seemed that he had not a care in the world. It seemed that he would never again have a care.
The appearance of the women sitting out of doors under the trees, with their heads bare, made the city so homelike and friendly that it was as if everybody knew everybody else.