The Road to Paris: A Story of Adventure

by Robert Neilson Stephens

Before Dick could recover from his bewilderment, or his comrades could offer other than expressions of indignant amazement, the cell door again opened, and the friendly guard came in and whispered to the printer that some of the Tory's friends were down-stairs with a coach and with an order for the old gentleman's release. The guard had been sent up-stairs to break the news to the Tory and to make him so presentable, if possible, that his friends might not have too much cause to complain of the effects upon him of his imprisonment. The guard, knowing the old gentleman's state, preferred to entrust the news-breaking to the superior delicacy and tact of the printer, and, having easily engaged the latter to perform it, went from the cell to wait in the corridor.

The printer, glancing at the old man and supposing him to be asleep, rapidly confided to his fellow prisoners what the guard had said, and then stepped over to the Tory and shook him gently by the shoulder. After a pause, he repeated the shaking, then stooped closer to the old man and grasped his body. A moment later, the printer turned to the expectant prisoners, and said in a loud whisper, "By God, I think they're too late with their damned release! If I know anything, the old man's dead!"

Meanwhile, the Tory's friends, three gentlemen of middle age, sat down-stairs in the guard-room, talking with the Irish officer, who explained that the prisoner would take a few minutes to make his toilet. When ten minutes had passed, the officer went to the corridor, and called up the dim stairway, "Mr. Follansbee's friends are impatient to see him," a speech meant as a signal for the guard to conduct the old gentleman down-stairs. The officer then stood at the side of the stair-foot, while the three gentlemen waited just within the guard-room door, opposite the officer.

In a minute the guard appeared at the head of the stairs, followed by two armed comrades, and supporting by the arm a bent, trembling, heavily wigged, sharp-featured, blinking person, whose clothes, of rich texture, were the same the old Tory had worn into the prison, but were now sadly soiled.

Slowly and painfully their wearer descended from step to step, in the half light of the stairs and corridor. When he reached the foot, the Irish officer stepped back to make more room for the Tory's three friends. These now came from the guard-room, and stood with half smiling, half shocked faces, to give the old man greeting. When he reached the lowest step, they held out their hands to him, but, to their astonishment, as the guard let go his arm, he darted forth between two of them, strode past the sentries at the outer prison door, and, ignoring the waiting coach, plunged down the street with an alacrity miraculous in one so enfeebled, and turned off at right angles into the first street that ran southward.

"His imprisonment has crazed him!" cried one of the three gentlemen.

"Hell and damnation!" cried the Irish officer, rushing up the stairs and motioning the guard to follow. Entering the cell, he stepped over the prostrate bodies of several prisoners to a figure that lay motionless in a corner. The clothes on this figure were Dick Wetheral's, but the face was that of the dead old Tory. With a curse, and a gesture of threat at the prisoners in the cell, the officer bounded back to the door, fastened it, and leaped down the stairs to order a pursuit.

At about the same moment, Dick, tossing the old man's wig back towards the prison from which he ran, thus conversed jubilantly and defiantly with himself:

"Cut my leg off, eh? Not if it and its comrade serve me properly to-day! The printer was right,—'twould have been a shame to waste that order of release on a dead man!"

As he ran, he divested himself of the old Tory's cumbersome coat, throwing it over a gate into an alley-way between two houses, and he also mentally justified his apparent selfishness in consenting to be the one who should use the opportunity of escape. As the printer and others had argued, in the few moments available for discussion, Dick's leg was at stake, he had been singled out for the harshest treatment, there was an evident intention to persecute the life out of him, and the others might be presently exchanged, which Dick could not hope to be as long as the machinations of his enemy could hinder.