"The opening of the prison door is our next difficulty to be overcome," whispered de Naarboveck: "I warned the jailor that I expected my secretary. Let us hope he will take you as such and let us pass out unmolested."
The military prison of the Council of War of Paris is not like other prisons: that is why de Naarboveck's plan had a fair chance of success. It would certainly have failed had it been attempted at La Santé or at La Roquette.... This building had been a private hotel of the old style.
On the first floor, the former reception-rooms had been divided into small offices, and the principal drawing-room had been transformed into a court-room. On the ground floor, what were evidently the kitchens and domestic offices in the last century now constituted the prison proper, for in these quarters are arranged the cells where the accused await their appearance before their judges. No one unacquainted with these arrangements would suspect that the low door, scarcely noticeable in the vestibule facing the staircase leading to the first floor is the entrance to the prison.
Yet those who pass through this low door find themselves in the corridor lined with prison cells.
At the door of the prison a warder is posted, whose rôle is not so much to watch the prisoners and prevent any attempt at escape as to open to persons needing to enter that ill-omened place. At night-time supervision is relaxed. The warder has to keep the offices in good order, and when he has his key in his pocket, certain that the heavy bolts and locks cannot be forced, he comes and goes about the house.
De Naarboveck was not only well posted in these details, but was aware that up to the day of Fandor's trial, in view of the extra coming and going, it had been decided to give the guardian an assistant, and that this assistant would be at his post from six o'clock onwards.
It was past six o'clock.
The chances were, that when the false advocates knocked from the inside, the prison door would be opened to allow them egress by the supplementary guardian. De Naarboveck tapped on the peephole made in the massive door.
The noise of heavy bolts withdrawn was heard; the prison door was half opened: the warder's face appeared. Fandor stifled a sigh of satisfaction: it was a jailor who did not know him: it was the substitute counted upon.