“I think you’re well in the soup, Lupin. What do you think?”
Ralph looked at Aurelie. The name of Lupin appeared to have made no impression upon her. With an expression of anguish she was listening to the sounds below.
“Poor lady with the green eyes, your faith is not yet [[243]]perfect,” said Ralph. “How on earth can a gentleman of the name of Philippe torment you?”
He opened the window, and speaking to some one on the pavement below, he said: “It’s the gentleman named Philippe from the Prefecture, isn’t it? Just a word with you, my friend, apart from your three big policemen, for they are three, hang it all! Don’t you recognize me? Baron de Limézy. Hurry up! Marescal is waiting for you.”
He shut the window.
“They’re all here, Marescal,” he said. “Four downstairs and three up here for I don’t count Bregeac, who seems to have lost interest in the business. That makes seven three-headed giants to make only one mouthful of me. I am horror-stricken, and so is the young lady with the green eyes.”
Aurelie forced herself to smile; she even muttered two or three words they could not catch.
Marescal was waiting on the landing. The front door was opened; hurrying steps came up the stairs. At once Marescal had to hand, eager to pull the quarry down, like a pack of hounds ready to be let loose, six men. He gave them their orders in a low voice, then entered, smiling all over his face.
“You don’t want a useless fight, do you, Baron?” he said cheerfully.
“No fight, Marquess. The idea of killing all seven [[244]]of you, like the seven wives of Bluebeard, is positively hateful to me,” said Ralph.