Count Hannibal

"I shall not tell you," she repeated, standing before him in the

fearlessness of scorn. "Another step and I rouse the house! M. de

Tignonville, to you who know me, I swear that if this man does not

retire--"

"He is in one of these rooms?" was Tignonville's answer. "In which? In

which?"

"Search them!" she answered, her voice low, but biting in its contempt.

"Try them. Rouse my women, alarm the house! And when you have his

people at your throats--five as they will be to one of you--thank your

own mad folly!"

Tuez-les-Moines' eyes glittered. "You will not tell us?" he cried.

"No!"

"Then--"

But as the fanatic sprang on her, La Tribe flung his arms round him and

dragged him back.

"It would be madness," he cried. "Are you mad, fool? Have done!" he

panted, struggling with him. "If Madame gives the alarm--and he may be

in any one of these four rooms, you cannot be sure which--we are undone."

He looked for support to Tignonville, whose movement to protect the girl

he had anticipated, and who had since listened sullenly. "We have

obtained what we need. Will you requite Madame, who has gained it for us

at her own risk--"

"It is Monsieur I would requite," Tignonville muttered grimly.

"By using violence to her?" the minister retorted passionately. He and

Tuez were still gripping one another. "I tell you, to go on is to risk

what we have got! And I for one--"

"Am chicken-hearted!" the young man sneered. "Madame--" He seemed to

choke on the word. "Will you swear that he is not here?"

"I swear that if you do not go I will raise the alarm!" she hissed--all

their words were sunk to that stealthy note. "Go! if you have not stayed

too long already. Go! Or see!" And she pointed to the trapdoor, from

which the face and arms of a sixth man had that moment risen--the face

dark with perturbation, so that her woman's wit told her at once that

something was amiss. "See what has come of your delay already!"

"The water is rising," the man muttered earnestly. "In God's name come,

whether you have done it or not, or we cannot pass out again. It is

within a foot of the crown of the culvert now, and it is rising."

"Curse on the water!" Tuez-les-Moines answered in a frenzied whisper.

"And on this Jezebel. Let us kill her and him! What matter afterwards?"

And he tried to shake off La Tribe's grasp.

But the minister held him desperately. "Are you mad? Are you mad?" he

answered. "What can we do against thirty? Let us be gone while we can.

Let us be gone! Come."

"Ay, come," Perrot cried, assenting reluctantly. He had taken no side

hitherto. "The luck is against us! 'Tis no use to-night, man!" And he

turned with an air of sullen resignation. Letting his legs drop through

the trap, he followed the bearer of the tidings out of sight. Another

made up his mind to go, and went. Then only Tignonville, holding the

lanthorn, and La Tribe, who feared to release Tuez-les-Moines, remained

with the fanatic.