"And will again, ma petite," said Cleek, for he indeed it was. "Jeannette, be merciful, as you hope for mercy. Let me get my friend here through the door into the boat and you shall deliver me up to Margot. I will come back—I swear it—if you set him free."
"Free to bring the gendarmes on us—pas si bête. No, my friend," laughed the girl.
"He will not do that, I swear it. Did Cleek the Cracksman ever break his oath?"
"No, but Cleek of what do you call your quarters—eh—ah—Scot-land Yard—eh—yes, he might!" said the girl.
Swiftly, in a torrent of French patois that Narkom could not follow, Cleek pleaded, disregarding the Superintendent's own pleas to exchange his life for that of Cleek himself.
Minutes passed and the girl remained obdurate. Suddenly she looked up.
"They say you have a white-and-gold lady to be your woman over on the other side—is it not so?"
Cleek shivered and shut his eyes in a veritable agony of spirit at this reference to Ailsa Lorne—his adored Ailsa who awaited him in the rose-clad riverside home, and who within a few brief days was to have been his wife.
A low, sibilant laugh burst from Jeannette's painted lips.
"Eh, but she would not like to know of this little meeting, my friend? She would scorn the poor Jeannette, eh? But it is Jeannette who holds you like that!" She snapped her finger and thumb in triumph, and as the bursts of merriment above them seemed to roll nearer, Cleek grew very, very still. This was indeed the end, and though he would die for the sake of his friend, the blow would be none the less bitter.