Mlle. Fouchette Part 67

"Oh, yes, let us follow the trail."

The instinct of the woman and the spy was now strong within her.

The "cat stairs" were closed at the top by a heavy oaken trap securely fastened within by two iron hooks.

"It is astonishing!" he said.

"What?"

"These fastenings, keys, bolts, bars, are all on this side."

"Which shows merely that they are to be used only from this direction, does it not?"

"Yes, that is plain; but we are now in another building, evidently,--a building that must open on some other street than the Rue St.

Jacques."

In the mean time Jean had finally unfastened and forced the trap. In another moment he had drawn her through the opening and they stood under a cloudless sky.

"Ah!" she murmured.

"We are free, at least, mon enfant."

She was not thinking of that. The silence, the glorious vault of stars, the----

"S-sh!"

"It's the bell of Sainte Genevieve," he whispered, crossing himself involuntarily.

"Cover the light, Monsieur Jean. These roofs have scores of eyes----"

"And a couple of prowlers might be the target for a score of bullets, eh? True enough!"

"Midnight!"

She had been counting the strokes of the clock, the sound of which came, m.u.f.fled and sullen, from the old square belfry beyond the Pantheon.

The roofs of this old quarter presented a curious conglomeration of the architectural monstrosities of seven centuries. It was a fantastic tumult of irregular shapes that only took the semblance of human design upon being considered in detail. As a whole they seemed the result of a great upheaval of nature--the work of some powerful demon--rather than that of human architectural conception. These confused and frightful shapes stretched from street to street,--stiff steeps of tile and moss-covered slate, ma.s.sive chimneys and blackened chimney-pots, great dormer-windows and rows of mere slits and holes of gla.s.s betraying the existence of humanity within, walls and copings of rusty stone running this way and that and stopping abruptly, mysterious squares of even blackness representing courts and breathing-s.p.a.ces,--up hill and down dale, under the canopy of stars, as far as the eye could reach!

And here, close at hand, and towering aloft in the entrancing grandeur of celestial beauty, rose the dome of the Pantheon,--so close, indeed, and so grandly great and beautiful in contrast with all the rest, that it seemed the stupendous creation of the angels.

"You are cold, pet.i.te?" he whispered.

She had shivered and drawn a little closer to him.

"No," replied the girl, glancing around her, "but it is frightful."

"What?"

"Oh, these sombre roofs."

"Bah! pet.i.te," he responded lightly, "ghosts don't promenade the roofs of Paris."

"They'd break their ghostly necks if they did."

"Come! and let us be careful not to break ours. Allons!"

They stole softly along the adjoining wall that ended at a court.

There was clearly no thoroughfare in this direction. Coming back on the trail he examined the stone attentively, she meanwhile shading the light with the folds of her dress. It was comparatively easy to note the recent wear of feet in the time-acc.u.mulation of rust and dirt and dry moss of these old stones. In a few moments he discovered that the tracks turned off between two high-pitched roofs towards the Pantheon.

As from one of these slopes grinned a double row of dormer-windows, it seemed incredible that any considerable number of prowlers might long escape observation.

"But they may be vacant," said the girl, when Jean had suggested the contingency.

"That is quite true."

So they stealthily crept rather than walked on, the end of the gutter ab.u.t.ting on another court. The depression was marked here by virgin moss.

"It is very extraordinary," growled Jean, entirely at a loss to account for the abrupt close of the trail. There was no way out of this trough save by climbing over one of these steep roofs, except----

"The window, perhaps," she whispered.

"True!"

Rapidly moving the lamp along the bottom of the gutter, Jean stopped.

"There it is!"

She pointed to the window above them with suppressed excitement.

There were almost imperceptible cleats cleverly laid across the corrugated tiling; for the roof had a pitch of fifty degrees, and the cas.e.m.e.nt was half-way up the slope.

"It must be so," he said. "Wait!"

With the lantern concealed beneath his coat he scrambled noiselessly up and examined the window. It was not fastened. Whoever had pa.s.sed here last had come this way. He opened it a little, then wider.

"Come! Quickly!"

Even as he called to her Jean threw open wide the windows,--which folded from within, like all French windows--and entered, leaving Mlle. Fouchette to follow at will. That damsel's catlike nature made a roof a mere playground, and she was almost immediately behind him.

"Mon Dieu! What is this?"

They had descended four steps to the floor, and now the exclamation burst from them simultaneously.

For a minute they stood, half breathless, looking about them.

They seemed to be in an empty room embracing the entire unfinished garret of a house, gable to gable. The s.p.a.ce was all roof and floor,--that is, the roof rose abruptly from the floor on two sides to the comb above.

As the eye became accustomed to the place, it first took in the small square boxes, some of which had evidently been unpacked or prepared for that process, the litter being scattered about the floor,--the boxes similar to those stored in the dark room below. There were roughly constructed platforms beneath all of the windows, with steps leading up to the same. Beneath these platforms and along the whole of one side of the room were wooden arm-racks glistening with arms of the latest model. Belts, cartridge-boxes, bayonets, swords, an immense a.s.sortment of military paraphernalia, lay piled on the floor at one end of the room.