“Quick, señor! Maximilian is sick. Go, go to him!”
Partly dressed, bootless, unarmed, Driscoll shoved the old man aside, and sped through the church, hopping over half awakened soldiers as he went. Once in the street, he glanced up at the tower room, which was Maximilian’s, and thought it odd that no light streamed through the narrow slits there. The sentinels, too, were gone. But he ran up the steps and darted along the corridor, only to strike his head against a heavy wooden door that was ajar. He rushed inside the cell, and with arms outspread quickly covered the space of it, in the utter dark smashing a chair, crashing over a table, cursing a mishap to his toe. But he found no one.
“This here’s a jail-break,” he mumbled under his breath. “Dam’ that Murgie, he’s roped me in to stop ’em!” Whereat, all unconsciously, he smiled again at Fatality.
Groping his way back to the corridor, he felt rather than saw three dim figures steal past the door. Silently, swiftly, he gave pursuit. He heard a fervent whisper just ahead.
“Hasten, dear friends, and may God––”
The next second he was grappling with someone. But his unknown captive did not resist.
“There, señor, loosen your fingers. I am not escaping. I am returning to my cell. But I had to make the other two think that I was with them.”
The voice was Maximilian’s.
474“Hark! Ah, poor souls, they have failed!”
The prince spoke truly. A fierce “Alto ahí!” sounded below. Then there were musket shots and the confusion of many scrambling feet. Murguía had routed out the church barracks. And when torches were brought, the soldiers discovered that they had hands on Miramon and Mejía. But the false sentinels were gone! In leaving the road clear they had used it themselves, already.