“Nearer than I imagined,” he remarked. “We shall be there in three minutes.”
He was just drawing in his head when he gave a visible start and leaned right out of the window, with his face upturned to the beating rain, listening intently.
Suddenly he withdrew it, and, snatching at the check-string, pulled it violently. I looked at him in amazement. His face was ghastly pale, but his thin lips were set firmly together and his features rigid with determination. It was the face of a brave, desperate man preparing to meet some terrible danger.
The carriage pulled up with a jerk and he leaped down into the road. He did not speak to me, so, after a second’s hesitation, I followed him and stood by his side. There was no mistaking the sound which had alarmed him. Behind, at no very great distance, was the sound of galloping horses and the rumble of smoothly-turning wheels.
Round the corner it came, a small brougham drawn by a pair of great thoroughbred horses, whose heavy gallop, even at fifty yards’ distance, seemed to shake the ground beneath us. M. de Cartienne snatched one of the carriage-lamps from the bracket and, stepping into the middle of the road, waved it backwards and forwards over his head. His action had the desired effect.
Quivering and plunging with fear, the horses, bathed in foam and mud, came to a standstill before us, and a tall, fair man, with a long fur coat thrown hurriedly over his evening-clothes, leaped out into the road. The Count was by his side in a moment.
I remained a little apart, of course, out of earshot, but with my eyes fixed upon the two men.
They could scarcely have spoken a hundred words before their colloquy was at an end. The new-comer returned to his carriage and M. de Cartienne followed his example. I looked at him as he stepped in, anxious to see what effect the other’s news had had upon him. Apparently it was not so bad as he had feared, for, although he still looked anxious and pale, his face had lost its ghastly hue.
We drove on in the same direction as before. When we had started he turned to me.
“Do you know what a police raid is?” he asked.