Mlle. Fouchette Part 66

She pointed to the boxes, unable to speak.

"Dynamite bombs! cartridges! powder and ball!" he declared, as he casually examined the nearest. "It is a real a.r.s.enal!"

"Come, Jean! Let us go!" said the girl, seizing him. "It is dangerous!

Your candle! think! Come!"

She dragged him towards the open door. "Ah! to think I beat upon the wall with that--that----"

She shivered like a leaf.

"You are right," said he. "The candle is dangerous. I will get my bicycle-lamp and we will investigate this mystery."

"It is no longer a mystery," she replied,--"not to me. It is the hand of the Duke."

"It is very singular," he muttered. "Very curious."

"It is a fairy romance," said she, as they pa.s.sed back through the narrow opening to Jean's appartement.

"There is no fairy story about that dynamite,--that, at least, is both practical and modern."

"Oh! I mean this secret pa.s.sage and all that----"

"Yes; but don't you know, mon enfant, that I first thought it led to--to your----"

"For shame! Monsieur Jean!"

"I don't know," said he, shaking his head smilingly. "Monsieur de Beauchamp was a very handsome man."

"Yes, besides being an ardent servant of the Duc d'Orleans and an artist collector of pictures and bric-a-brac----"

"Especially 'bric-a-brac,'" said Jean, with sarcasm.

"Anyhow, mon ami, you now know----"

"That I was unjust to you, yes; pardon me! You could know very little of Beauchamp, since he was able to collect all of this bric-a-brac under your nose."

Mlle. Fouchette reddened, thinking, nervously, of what Inspector Loup would say on that head. Jean saw this color and changed the conversation.

"Come, now, let us go and explore Monsieur de Beauchamp's articles of vertu."

With the bicycle bull's-eye light in hand he led the way back through the secret pa.s.sage, followed closely by the young girl.

"Monsieur de Beauchamp wasn't the mighty Caesar in one thing," said Jean, as he squeezed through the narrow opening in the wall.

"How is that?"

"He had only lean men about him,--true conspirators."

"Yes,--it was necessary."

They found the dark room where all of the munitions of war and compound a.s.sa.s.sination were stored. Entering, they inadvertently closed the door behind them.

"Dame!" cried Mlle. Fouchette. "The key, monsieur! the key!"

"Que diable!"

"How provoking!"

"But we have the dynamite----"

"Ah, ca!"

But somehow Mlle. Fouchette was not as badly frightened at the situation as one might have the right to expect. She even laughed gayly at their mutual imprisonment.

"Dynamite!" muttered Jean,--"a throne founded upon dynamite would crumble quickly----"

"Yes, and by dynamite," said she.

"Monsieur de Beauchamp was----"

"Is a royalist leader----"

"An a.s.sa.s.sin!"

"A tool of the Duc d'Orleans."

"The Duke would never stoop to wholesale murder! Never!"

"It is the way of kings, n'est-ce pas? to shelter themselves from responsibility behind their tools?"

"Stop! there must be guns for this ammunition. It must be----"

Before the idea had fairly germinated in his brain Jean discovered a door that in the candle-light had easily escaped their observation. It was at the opposite side of the room from which they had entered. It was a narrow door and the key was in the lock.

"Another way out," suggested the girl.

"Surely, pet.i.te, since that closet entrance was never meant for a porte-cochere."

The door opened upon a narrow and dark pa.s.sage paved with worn tiles.

At the end of this pa.s.sage another door barred the way. An examination showed at once that this last had not been used for a long time. To the left, however, a mere slit in the stone was seen to involve a steep stair of very much worn steps. Opposite the entrance to this stairway was a shallow niche in the wall, in which were the remains of burned candles.

"Cat stairs," said Mlle. Fouchette.

"And the cats have used it a good deal of late, I should judge," he observed, carefully examining the entrance in the glare of the lamp.

"Leads to the roof, probably," she muttered.

"Probably. Let us mount."