“I shall not ask you——” Camain was beginning, when the tramp of feet in the corridor interrupted him. “Ah, here is our adventurer. Yes, bring him in, men.”
If the Comte de Brencourt felt the indignity of his position, he did not show it. His chief preoccupation, Valentine could not but feel, was to avoid looking at her. He had not been secured without a struggle, that was evident, for there was a cut on his forehead, and his neckcloth was wrenched half off. His arms were bound to his sides by a pipe-clayed cross-belt. Valentine could not keep her eyes off him, but the Comte himself looked nowhere but at Camain. And Camain, advancing a little, studied him for a moment, his hands behind his back, his rather prominent blue eyes suddenly grown searching.
“Your report, corporal?” he said abruptly, still running his gaze over the captive.
The National Guard related a story to which no one in the room listened more fixedly than the concierge of Mirabel: how the sentry—apparently neither Grégoire nor Jacques—happening to look round at the château not very long after the entry of the Deputy and his party, had seen a man getting in at one of the ground-floor windows, how he had summoned the guard and they, selecting the same window, as the quickest mode of entrance, had at last run the intruder to earth on the basement floor and, after a lively resistance, captured him.
“Very smart work, corporal,” said the Deputy. “But that window—what window was it?”
“We found ourselves when we got in, Citizen Deputy, in that room they call the ‘sallette.’ ”
“The sallette!” echoed Camain in surprise, and Valentine suppressed an exclamation. How nearly right her presentiments had been, then! But to enter by the window, in broad daylight, in view of the sentry; it sounded crazy!
“And what had he in his pockets?” went on the Deputy.
“These small tools, Citizen Deputy, a handkerchief, and a case with assignats; we have not counted them yet.”
(He must have had time to get rid of the plan, then.)