"Shot! . . . You're going to be shot, you dirty Franzose!"
He answered, with a laugh:
"Not a bit of it! Things don't happen as quickly as all that."
"Shot!" repeated the other. "Herr Leutnant said so."
"Well, what's he waiting for, your Herr Leutnant?"
The lieutenant was making a rapid investigation at the entrance to the tunnel. The men who had gone down it came running back, half-asphyxiated by the fumes of the explosion. As for the sentry, whom Bernard had been forced to get rid of, he was losing blood so profusely that it was no use trying to obtain any fresh information from him.
At that moment, news arrived from the barracks, where they had just learnt, through a courier sent from the villa, that Prince Conrad had disappeared. The officers were ordered to double the guard and to keep a good lookout, especially at the approaches.
Of course, Paul had counted on this diversion or some other of the same kind which would delay his execution. The day was beginning to break and he had little doubt that, Prince Conrad having been left dead drunk in his bedroom, one of his servants had been told to keep a watch on him. Finding the doors locked, the man must have given the alarm. This would lead to an immediate search.
But what surprised Paul was that no one suspected that the prince had been carried off through the tunnel. The sentry was lying unconscious and was unable to speak. The men had not realized that, of the two fugitives seen at a distance, one was dragging the other along. In short, it was thought that the prince had been assassinated. His murderers must have flung his body into some corner of the quarries and then taken to flight. Two of them had succeeded in escaping. The third was a prisoner. And nobody for a second entertained the least suspicion of an enterprise whose audacity simply surpassed imagination.
In any case there could no longer be any question of shooting Paul without a preliminary inquiry, the results of which must first be communicated to the highest authorities. He was taken to the villa, where he was divested of his German overcoat, carefully searched and lastly was locked up in a bedroom under the protection of four stalwart soldiers.