Robert Tournay Part 47

"Well--such being the case, I will let you come through, but you must be sure to come out this way, citizeness. If you were seen going out of the lower entrance, not having entered there, it might get both of us in trouble. And you might lose your place as well as I."

As he spoke he opened the lower half of an iron wicket. "Duck your head a little, citizeness, and enter quickly."

Edme did not need a second bidding; the gate closed with a snap, and she was inside the conciergerie.

"Privat is in the second corridor. Go to the right and then turn to the left," said the warder. "There he is now, just at the corner," he added hastily. "Hey, Privat," and he gave a prolonged, low whistle, "here is your sister, come to see you."

Francois Privat was slow of speech as well as of brain, so he merely stood gaping with amazement at sight of the young woman who claimed him as a brother, and who bore not the slightest resemblance to his sister Jeanne. Edme stepped quickly forward toward the turnkey, saying in a low voice as she approached him:--

"I bring _a message_ from your sister; the good sentry should have told you." Then in the same breath, she went on hurriedly to say: "The poor woman was taken quite ill this afternoon, so ill that she had to be put to bed. I came to do her work in the tribunal chambers, but thought you should be told of your sister's illness, so asked the sentry to let me speak to you."

In her trepidation, she hardly knew what words came to her lips.

There was silence; then after Privat had gotten the information into his head, and had digested it, he said slowly:--

"Tell Jeanne Privat that I shall come to see her--let me see--day after to-morrow--no--the day after that, Thursday, my first free time."

Edme looked up into his face. He was very tall and of a ruddy complexion, fully fifteen years younger than his sister.

"Is that all your message?" she inquired, in order to gain time for thought.

"At four o'clock in the afternoon, if you like, but she knows the time well enough--from four to six."

Then without showing any further interest in the subject, the imperturbable Privat took up his bunch of keys and began to polish one of them upon his coatsleeve.

There was a pause.

Edme summoned all her courage and spoke with as much composure as she could a.s.sume, although she felt that her voice trembled:--

"Citizen Privat, I have an urgent request to make you."

Privat blinked at her out of his stupid eyes.

"But I am prepared to pay for it."

A sign of animation seemed to come into the turnkey's face, but he did not move nor seek to question her.

"What I am about to ask may be very difficult for you to do, and that is why I am prepared to pay you _well_." She dwelt upon the last words, seeming to guess that she had struck the right note.

"How much are you prepared to pay?" he asked in his slow way.

Edme drew a purse from the folds of her gown, and opening it disclosed a number of shining gold pieces. Privat's eyes were animated now.

"All that!" he exclaimed. "What do you want me to do for it? It must be something dangerous. I--I am not a brave man."

"It is merely," continued Edme, holding the open purse in her hand, "to procure me speech with a prisoner."

"What prisoner?"

"Colonel Robert Tournay."

"But it is impossible; he is in secret confinement."

"I know he is, but what I ask is not impossible. There are five hundred francs here; five hundred francs, all for you, if you will but bring me to the cell of Robert Tournay."

"I cannot do that; I have not the key."

"You know who has the key. Surely some of this gold will enable you to get it. I leave the means with you."

Privat's mind seemed to be going through the process which served him for thought.

"At the further end of the south corridor," he finally said, motioning with a key, "in half an hour, the prisoner Tournay will be allowed to walk for exercise. The south corridor is separated from this one by a grated door. I will see that you get through that door. That is all I can do."

Edme pressed the purse into his huge palm, which closed upon it greedily.

"Shall I come with you now?" she asked, her pulse beating high between expectation, hope, and fear.

"No, wait here in the shadow until I come to fetch you to him. I shall also come to tell you when you must leave the south corridor. You will have to do so quickly and go back the same way you came. If you are discovered here, I shall get into trouble. You understand?"

"I understand," she answered.

CHAPTER XXIII

TOURNAY'S VISITOR

For three days Tournay and St. Hilaire worked away persistently at the bars of their window. They only dared work between the hours of one and four in the morning. Not only secrecy but great ingenuity was called for, as it was necessary that the bars should preserve in the daytime their usual appearance of solidity.

To do this, all the filings were kept, and at the termination of each night's work, this dust, moistened by saliva into a paste, was smeared into the fissure they had made. Their intention was to cut each bar nearly through, leaving it standing, but so weakened that it could be torn out by a sudden wrench.

On the morning which terminated their third night's labor, just as the first gray streak in the east announced the early coming of the long, hot summer day, the third bar had been cut halfway through. The two prisoners looked into each other's eyes. Both realized that they must work rapidly in order to complete their task in time.

"At all hazards we must begin earlier to-night," whispered St. Hilaire significantly. Tournay nodded. "There is still a good deal of work to be done, although a thin man might squeeze through," he said.

"Not a man of your breadth, colonel," replied St. Hilaire, carefully rubbing the dampened filings into the crevice. "We shall have to cut through all of them, and even then it will be a narrow pa.s.sageway for your shoulders."

"Now for a little rest," he continued, descending from the table as quietly as a cat, and putting it in another part of the cell.

Tired out by their work and the attendant excitement, the two men threw themselves, fully dressed, upon their beds and slept until late in the morning. Their slumber might have continued until past noon had they not been rather unceremoniously awakened by the appearance of the turnkey and a couple of gendarmes by their bedside.

"What is wanted?" exclaimed Tournay sleepily.

"You are to be transferred to the conciergerie, citizen colonel, that is all," was the reply, although the tone implied a deeper meaning.

Tournay sprang from the bed, wide enough awake now, and with a sickening feeling at his heart. He looked at St. Hilaire, who was lying upon his own pallet outwardly indifferent to the announcement, but whose fingers silently stole under the mattress and closed upon the file that had been placed there the night before. St. Hilaire continued to lie there motionless, feigning sleep; but his alert brain was busy with the problem as to where it would be possible for him to deftly and successfully hide the useful little tool in case the guards had also come to search their cell.