A mouse squeaked across the floor, the boards creaked. André recalled with a curious thrill the grisly warning that all who had ever seen the face of “No. 101” had perished. He recalled the death of Captain Statham, of others. Was he, after all, to share the same fate? In this deathly quiet he felt his blood go cold, his courage ooze and ebb. A longing to crawl away began to master him.
Brave man though he was, he would have obeyed it, when a rustle on the public stairs brought him with a swift spring to his feet. For that was the rustle of a woman’s skirt. The door was opening. The rustle again, and a gleam of light from a lamp. A woman, by God! the thief was a woman. The woman!
Yes. The girl at the inn surely, for this was a tall young woman who walked straight forward to the escritoire, a thief who knew no fear, calmly determined to do her business without flinching. André wavered as he had in the charcoal-burner’s cabin. Should he arrest her there and then or wait? Yes, no? Yes, wait. She must be caught red-handed in the act that he might win his love.
Suddenly the lingering echo of a trumpet floated up into the darkness from the Cour des Princes. André started. Again that silvery note. The trumpets—the silver trumpets—of the Chevau-légers de la Garde! Was he dreaming? Was he at Fontenoy? No, no. The King’s escort, ha! the King had returned. The great coup had succeeded. The game was his just as he had planned. Fortune, superbly beneficent, had given him all. And then he clutched at the curtain, sick, faint, gasping. For at the second trumpet note the woman had turned to listen, the light fell on her face—Denise! The thief was Denise!
CHAPTER XXVII
THE CHEVALIER MAKES HIS LAST APPEARANCE
Denise! yes, it was Denise!
The sweat dripped off André’s face in the agony of that moment. His fingers, his brain, his body, had turned numb. Think, he could not. He was only conscious of one thought, that burned red-hot. Fortune, superbly maleficent, had kept her most devilish revenge and punishment to the last. Denise must be ruined by the man who loved her, for Louis, persuaded to return by Madame de Pompadour at the instigation of the Vicomte de Nérac, would be in this room in a few minutes. This, and not the successful theft of the despatch, was the vengeance of “No. 101.”
Fascinated by fear, André, tongue-tied, watched Denise go straight up to the escritoire, insert a key, open the drawer. And then love swept his horror away, unloosed the paralysis that held him a prisoner, and told him what to do. Denise could yet be saved by instant flight. True, his scheme had failed; the wrath of Madame de Pompadour and the King whom she had deceived would fall on him; Madame would herself probably be ruined. What did it matter, so that he rescued Denise from the awful peril, the wiles which “No. 101” had with such fiendish completeness laid for her? For that it was “No. 101’s” diabolical plan he had no doubt now. Yvonne had gulled and betrayed him, as from the first.
But just as he wrenched the curtain aside and sprang into the room with cry of “Denise!” she had tottered back with a low exclamation of horror.
“Denise!”