"You've no luck," said his confederate in a mocking tone. "Directly you try to make people speak, they collapse—the Baron, cracked; his sweetheart, mad as a hatter. You're doing well."
The exasperated d'Estreicher thrust away the old woman who stumbled and turning fell down behind an arm-chair quite close to Dorothy, and cried furiously.
"You're right, my luck's out. But this time perhaps we've found a lode. Before her brain gave she spoke of a cupboard and flagstones. Which? This one or that? They're both paved with flags?"
He pointed first to the kind of closet in which Dorothy was hiding and then to a cupboard on the other side of the fireplace.
"I'll begin with this cupboard. You start on that one," he said. "Or rather, no—come and help me; we'll go through this one thoroughly first."
He knelt down near the fireplace, opened the cupboard door, and with the poker got to work on one of the cracks between the flags of its floor which his accomplice tried to raise.
Dorothy lost no time. She knew that they were coming to the closet and that she was lost if she did not fly. The old woman, stretched out close to her, was laughing gently and then grew silent as the men worked on.
Hidden by the arm-chair, Dorothy slipped noiselessly out of the cupboard, took off the lace cap which covered the hair of Juliet Assire and put it on her own head. Then she took her spectacles, then her shawl, put it round her shoulders, and succeeded in hiding her figure with a big table-cloth of black serge. At that moment Juliet fell silent. On the instant Dorothy took up her even, joyous laughter. She rose, and stooping like an old woman, ambled across the room.
D'Estreicher growled: "What's the old lunatic up to? Mind she doesn't get away."
"How can she get away?" asked his confederate. "You've got the key in your pocket."