"Make haste, Monsieur; there is not a moment to lose. You can escape through the main corridor. But you must be quick, for the Consul may finish his bath at any minute, and his brothers retire here to await him while he dresses."
We were hurrying toward the door as she spoke, but I, feeling as if the Mameluke were close behind me, seized her hand and dragged her roughly into the corridor as I whispered:
"Yes, we must be quick, for Rustan is after us!"
With a half-suppressed scream she let go my hand, turned to Gaston, who was standing at the door motionless as a statue and, to all appearance, deaf and blind as one also, uttered the one word, "Rustan!" and fled swiftly down the dark side corridor, leaving me utterly bewildered. The western sun was flooding the cabinet of the First Consul when I went into my hiding-place, but the sun had set and twilight had fallen and the candles had been long lit when I stepped out into the corridor. The wax tapers set in sconces along the corridor lighted it but poorly, and I knew not which way to go.
"Run, Monsieur!" cried Gaston, in a terrified whisper, "straight down the corridor till you come to the grand staircase. And run as if the devil was after you, for he is!"
That was all I needed,—a word of direction,—and I was off. But scarcely had I gone a few feet when I heard a great noise and shouting behind me, and Gaston crying, "Stop thief!" I thought at first he was turning traitor, now that he had my gold piece with no chance of gaining another from me. But as I ran the faster, and the noise behind me did not seem to gain on me, as I feared it might, I concluded he was making a great outcry to cover his own part in my escape, and perhaps was hindering the pursuit more than helping it.
Yet when I came to the turn of the grand staircase I thought for a moment I had also come to the end of my days; for just as I felt sure I was distancing those behind me, there came running swiftly toward me from the other end of the dim corridor an officer with sword drawn, and I saw he would meet me exactly at the head of the grand staircase. The light from a tall taper fell on his face as he neared the staircase. It was the Chevalier Le Moyne!
I had but a moment to think. Should I stop to engage with him, I had no doubt I could unsword him as easily as he had unsworded me in the dance by Chouteau's Pond; but the delay would bring a score to his help, and I would be quickly overpowered, if not done to death at once. Neither did I like to turn my back on that drawn sword as I fled down the steps, feeling sure it would spit me through the shoulders, much as Narcisse spitted the wild fowl for roasting at Émigré's Retreat. But above all I did not wish the chevalier to see my face; for, even should I make good my escape, Paris would be no safe place for me should he recognize in the flying "thief" his hated St. Louis rival.
I pulled my hat low over my eyes, lifted my left arm before my face as if to shield it from his sword, rushed straight toward him, met him, as I thought I should, at the top of the staircase, and, with a quick twist of my foot (a school-boy's trick), sent him sprawling down the stairs. In three great bounds I had cleared the staircase and his prostrate body, and like a whirlwind I threw myself upon the sentry at its foot, who—half dazed by this sudden descent of the chevalier and myself, one rolling and bumping from step to step, the other leaping through the air like some great winged creature—was nevertheless in the act of raising his gun to fire at me. As I hurled my great weight full upon him, the gun flew from his hands, and his little dancing-master figure went pirouetting across the terrace into the darkness beyond, in a vain struggle to recover his balance. I sprang down the terrace after him, and disappeared in the friendly darkness.
It was time. Starting from the gloom in every direction, armed figures seemed to spring from the ground, while down the great staircase behind me clattered, shrieking and shouting in every key, a throng of officers and soldiers, led by a dark figure gliding swiftly and silently far in advance, and holding in his upraised hand something that glittered as it caught the rays from wax tapers. In the very act of springing down the first terrace, I saw the glittering dagger leave Rustan's hand, hurled straight at my head, and heard it fall far below me on the stone parapet of the last terrace.