Jeannette stood silent, too, looking at him. One, two, perhaps three minutes passed before she turned again.
"Well, mon ami, I don't know that I owe anything to Margot up there. What happens to me if I let you go? How do you pay me—eh?"
"Jeannette, you will? You have only to tell me what to do in return."
Cleek's voice trembled despite himself at this shadow of renewed hope, and Jeannette flushed in the dark.
"Bah, but I am the fool she calls me," she muttered, "But death comes soon enough. Pay me——" She came close to him, thrusting her face close to his. "No lover have I. I am old and plain; you are Cleek, once the lover of Margot the Queen. Kiss me! Nay, as you value your life and that of your friend there, kiss me as you would your woman over there—that is the price you shall pay!"
For one brief second Cleek's soul revolted. The thought of offering his lips—which he held sacred to the one fair woman who had led him up from depths such as these to her own pure level—sickened him. He would sooner yield life itself. Yet Narkom's life depended on his own, and with a secret prayer for forgiveness he bent over, took the thin, shaking figure literally into his arms, and kissed the painted lips, not once, but thrice. "God bless you, Jeannette!" he murmured. "He alone can reward you."
With a little moan of pain Jeannette clung to him as if indeed he were the lover she craved; then, slipping from his arms, she turned, sped across the room, and tugged at a small, half-hidden trap-door.
"Quick," she panted. "Slash his ropes and go—before I repent! I'll tell them you've gone!"
Without another look or sound she disappeared up the staircase, leaving Cleek to make good the escape of them both, in his heart a prayer of gratitude, and a resolution to save Jeannette from this den of crime if he but lived to escape into safety.
Hardly daring to breathe, he and Narkom stumbled down another foul-laden ladder and into a noisome passage, which eventually brought them onto the little landing stage.