They waited there for five or ten minutes, hearing the heavy noise of Madame's progress above their heads. They waited there, and as they did so the room seemed to become cold, their blood ran slowly within them, the three grouped themselves close together as if for mutual warmth and consolation.
Then they heard a high-pitched voice at the top of the stairs.
"Send your man up, Monsieur, send your man up. I have no strength to lift this bag."
At a nod from Johnnie, Hull ran up the stairs. In a moment more he came down, staggering under the burden of a great leather wallet slung over his shoulder, and was followed by Madame La Motte, now covered in a fur cloak and hood.
She held another on her arm. "Put it on, put it on," she said to Elizabeth, "quickly. We must get out of this. The dawn comes, the wind freshens, we have but an hour."
And then in the ghostly dawn the four people left the House of Shame, left it with the red door open to the winds, and hurried away towards the river.
None of them spoke. The old dame in her fur robe shuffled on with extraordinary vitality, past straggling houses, past inns from which nautical signs were hung, for a quarter of a mile towards the mud-marsh which fringed the pool of Thames. She walked down a causeway of stones, sunk in the mud and gravel, to the edge of the water.
It was now high tide and the four came out in the grey light upon a little stone quay where some sheds were set.
In front of one of them, heavily covered with tar, a lantern was still burning, wan and yellow in the coming light of day.
Madame La Motte kicked at the door of this shed with her high-heeled shoe. There was no response. She opened the door, burst into a stuffy, fœtid place where two men were lying upon coils of rope. She stirred them with her foot, but they were in heavy sleep, and only groaned and snored in answer.