"Likely enough," replied Father Louis, "considering she was not in bed till four o'clock!"
All the same, this persistent silence puzzled the innkeeper. He tried to peep through the keyhole, but the key was in it. Then he quietly drew a gimlet from his pocket and bored a hole in the door. Aunt Palmyra watched him smiling: she winked and jogged his elbow.
"Ho, ho, my boy! I'll wager you don't stick at having a look at your customers this way, when it suits you!"
With the ease of practice the innkeeper glued his eye to the hole he had just made. He uttered an exclamation:
"Good heavens!"
"What is it?" cried Nichoune's aunt in a tone of alarm. "Is her room empty?"
"Empty? No! But."...
Father Louis was white as paper. He searched his pocket in feverish haste, drew from it a screwdriver, rapidly detached the lock, and rushed into the room, followed by Aunt Palmyra, who bawled:
"Oh, my good lord! Whatever is the matter with her?"
Nichoune was stretched out on her bed, and might have seemed asleep to an onlooker were it not for two things which at once struck the eye: her face was all purple, and her arms, sticking straight up in the air, were terrifyingly white and rigid. Approaching the bed, the innkeeper and Aunt Palmyra saw that Nichoune's arms were maintained in this vertical position by means of string tied round her wrists and fastened to the canopy over the bed.