“Very good. Now we will unbind you, and you will go to the other side of the parapet. We will take off your uniforms and leave them here with your muskets. After we have descended, you will come and loosen the rope which you will find secured here. Let it fall, as we wish to keep it. You understand?”
“Yes, yes,” they cried. Richelieu counted out two hundred pistoles and placed them by the muskets.
“Here is the money,” he said.
I untied the ropes and the two men retreated to the other side of the roof. In a moment I had knotted the pieces of rope together, made one end secure and dropped the other over.
“I will go first,” I said. “The knots may slip,” and before the duke could protest I was over the battlement. I let myself down hand over hand until I was opposite my window, but I found the bars beyond my reach. By a supreme effort I touched the wall with my foot and pushed myself outward, and as I swung in I grasped one of the bars and pulled myself to the window-ledge. I tied the end of the rope to the bars, so that the duke could reach them without difficulty, and then slipped into the cell. He followed a moment later, and the rope was loosened from above and fell. I drew it in.
“You must get back to your cell at once,” I said, and raised the slab in the floor, slid the one below it back and crawled aside for him to pass.
“But the window?” he asked. “If they find a bar out they will know everything.”
“Leave that to me,” I answered; “I will replace it.”
The duke wrung my hand and dropped through the opening into the cell below. I replaced the slabs, concealing the rope, for which we might have further need. Then I ran to the window and forced the bar back into place. I opened the box of cement, moistened it with water from my can, and rapidly filled up the places where the old cement had been broken away, rubbing my fingers over it until convinced that it was quite smooth. It was drying rapidly and would soon set. I raised the slab again and placed the box with the remainder of the cement beneath it. I rubbed my hands on the floor and then over the new cement, until I could see by the moonlight which filtered through the bars that it was dirty as the adamant which surrounded it. Satisfied that it could not be detected without close examination, I threw myself exhausted upon the bench.
Scarcely had I done so when I heard a noise in the cell below. In an instant I was at the loosened slab.