It was the moment for which the Chouan had been waiting. He gave the passport bodily into those incautious hands, and a second later smote their owner with exceeding force on the point of the jaw. M. Duchâtel staggered back, his arms going wide, and the passport flew half across the room as La Vireville followed up with a smashing blow over the heart. The tall mahogany bedpost, which the kidnapper's head next violently encountered, finished La Vireville's work for him with much completeness, but before the inanimate body could slide to the floor La Vireville had grabbed at it and pulled it on to the bed.
"If I have killed him!" he thought, as he bent over his victim, for it looked rather like it. "No; that kind does not die of a good honest blow." With luck, however, he might be unconscious for hours, but it was as well to be on the safe side; so, since it repelled him to cut the throat of a senseless man, he tied his feet with the bell-pull, which he hacked down for the purpose, his hands with the curtain cords. Then he stuffed a towel into his mouth, tied it in position with another, and flung the quilt entirely over him.
He had already possessed himself of M. Duchâtel's papers, reserving their perusal, however, for a more favourable opportunity, and now, picking up Anne-Hilarion's passport, he tiptoed to the door of the inner room, and listened for a moment. Singularly little noise, on the whole, had attended his assault on Anne's guardian, and there was complete silence the other side of the door, yet La Vireville's heart was nearer his mouth than it had yet been, for a child's shrill scream either of joy or terror—and Anne must be thoroughly unnerved by this time—might bring the house about them. However, the possibility had to be faced, so he opened the door a little and called the boy's name softly. There was no answer, and as the room was in darkness the rescuer had perforce to take the lamp from the larger apartment, and to enter, shading it with one hand.
The Comte de Flavigny was fast asleep in the wide bed, which looked large in the little room, and in which he himself appeared very small, lonely, and pathetic, with one hand under a flushed cheek and the other clutching fast the edge of the patchwork quilt. "The poor baby!" thought La Vireville, but had no time to spend upon sentiment. The main thing, for both their sakes, was to wake him without startling him.
"If I were really the nurse whose duties I now seem to be taking upon myself," thought the Chouan, "I should know better what to do."
He put down the lamp and stooped over the child, shaking the small shoulder very gently, and calling him by name, a hand ready to clap over his mouth if he should scream. At the third or fourth repetition of his name Anne-Hilarion stirred.
"It is not time, Elspeth," he murmured rather crossly, and buried his face in the pillow. "It is not time to get up, I tell you!"
"But it is," asserted La Vireville; "high time. Anne, my little one. . . ." He put his arms under him and lifted him up a trifle.
Anne gave a great sigh and opened his eyes. "Is it thou, Papa? I dreamed—I had such a horrible dream. . . ." Then he returned more fully to waking life. "Who is it?" he said shrilly, beginning to struggle in the strong arms like a captured bird.
"It is I, my child—your friend the Chevalier," said La Vireville, kissing him. "Don't make a noise, little cabbage! See, I am going to take you back to England. But you must be quiet, above all things!"