A hasty glance over his shoulder showed that the gentry in the corner café were stirred by some common impulse that led them to the windows, while the bullock cart was now drawn awkwardly across the narrow way. As the horsemen came near, the loungers in the lower part of the street displayed a singularly unanimous desire to close in and follow them. There were hundreds of townspeople gathered on the pavements, and not a few vehicles occupied the roadway; so these concerted movements were not discernible to any one who was not a past master in the revolutionary art like Poluski, and to him only because his suspicions were already active.
The King and Beaumanoir were coming on at such a pace that Felix, owing to his low stature, would be quite invisible to them if he stood among the crowd now hovering on the curb; so he pushed boldly out into the middle of the street, took off his hat with a flourish, and sang lustily:
"O, Alec! O, mon roi!"
The thunderbolt that removed the Governor of Silesia, had it struck the paving stones in front of the King's horse, could hardly have startled Alec more than the sight of Felix, standing there, bare headed and grinning, and chanting an improvised version of a famous song at the top of his voice.
"You, Felix!" he cried. "You here?"
"It is far more to the point that Joan is there," said Poluski, with expressive pantomime.
"In the hotel?"
"Yes, up the stairs, first door on the right, across the landing. You have a few minutes to spare. Go quickly!"
Alec required no second bidding. Leaping from the saddle, he threw the reins to one of the orderlies. "Give me a few seconds, Berty," he cried to Beaumanoir, and before the onlookers could grasp the motive of this sudden halt, he had vanished through the doorway.
"You come, too; you are wanted," said Felix, addressing Beaumanoir in English.