Yesterday afternoon, the police of Caudebec, on receiving information that a wood-cutter had heard the screams of a woman appealing for help from an old lime-kiln on the outskirts of Maulevrier Forest, sent a sergeant and a constable to enquire into the matter. As these two representatives of the law approached the clearing in which the lime-kiln stands, they perceived over the fence two men who were dragging a woman towards a closed carriage beside which another woman was standing. Compelled to make the circuit of the fence, the police only reached the scene of action after the departure of the carriage. They at once started in pursuit of it, a pursuit which should have ended in the success of the police. But the horses drawing the carriage were so swift and the driver’s knowledge of the lanes and byways so extensive, that he succeeded in throwing them off his track in the network of roads to the north between Caudebec and Motteville. Moreover the night was coming on; and they have not yet succeeded in ascertaining in which direction this nice little gang escaped.
“And they will not succeed,” said Ralph to himself. “Nobody but me can reconstitute the facts since nobody but me knows the points of departure and arrival.”
He formulated the following conclusions:
“One fact is certain: Mother Rousselin was in that old lime-kiln in charge of a confederate.
“Secondly, Josine and Leonard, who lured her away from Lillebonne and shut her up, go to see her every day and try to extract some definite information from her. Yesterday the questioning was doubtless rather violent. Mother Rousselin yells; the police arrive. A desperate flight. They get away. Somewhere on their route they deposit their captive in another prison, already prepared for her; and once more they are safe. All these emotions brought about Josine’s attack of nerves.”
He studied an ordnance map of the route from Maulevrier Forest to the Nonchalante. The direct route was thirty kilometers; somewhere off that route, at some distance to the left or to the right Madam Rousselin was imprisoned.
“Come,” he said to himself, “the terrain of the conflict is marked out. It’s about time that I made my entry on to the stage.”
Next day he got to work, wandering along the Normandy roads, questioning the dwellers on them and trying to discover the points of the passage and the halting-places of “an old barouche drawn by two little horses.” Logically and inevitably his quest must come to a successful end.
During those days the love of Ralph and Josephine Balsamo was at its keenest and most passionate. The young woman, knowing that the police were on her track, and remembering what she had heard at the Vasseur Inn, at Doudeville, did not dare to leave the Nonchalante and traverse the Caux country. So after every expedition Ralph found her on the barge, and they threw themselves into one another’s arms with an exasperated desire to enjoy to the full the delights which, they foresaw, must soon come to an end.