CHAPTER VI

THE ESCAPE

“Very well, M. de Rochefort,” replied Ferminard. “I will do as you tell me, though as I have just said, I do not know your meaning in the least.”

Rochefort heard him putting his bed back in its place. Then he set about his preparations. He placed the rope under the mattress of his own bed, and stripping the coverlet off, took the upper sheet away. Having replaced the coverlet, he began tearing the sheet into long strips. The sheet was about four feet broad and it gave him eight strips, each about six inches broad by five feet in length. Four of these he placed under the coverlet of his bed just as he had placed the rope under the mattress, the other four he put in his pockets.

Then he sat down on his chair, and, placing his elbows on the table and his chin between his hands, began to review his plans, or rather the new modification of them which the inclusion of Ferminard in his flight necessitated.

When Bonvallot appeared at his door on his last round of inspection, Rochefort was seated like this.

“Ah, ha!” said he, turning his head, “you are earlier to-night, it seems to me.”

“No, monsieur,” replied Bonvallot, “I am not before my time, for the clock of the courtyard has struck eleven.”

“Indeed. I did not hear it. Sound does not carry very well among these stone walls, and though the courtyard clock is close to this cell, and though it doesn’t whisper over its work, the sound is scarcely perceptible. A man might shout in my cell, Monsieur Bonvallot, without being heard very far.”

“My faith, you are right,” said Bonvallot. “We had a lunatic of a prisoner in No. 32 down the corridor, and it seemed to me that he spent all his time shouting, but he disturbed no one. Our inn is well constructed, you see, monsieur, so that the guests may have a quiet time.”

Rochefort rose from his chair, walked to the door, shut it, and put his back against it.

“Hi,” said Bonvallot, who had been bending to see if the water-pitcher were empty. “What are you doing, monsieur?”

“Nothing. I wish to have a word with you. I am leaving your inn to-night and wish to settle my bill. Do not shout, you will not be heard, and if you move from the place where you are standing——”

Bonvallot, who had grown pale at the first words, suddenly, with head down and arms outstretched, made a dash at Rochefort. The Count, slipping aside, managed to trip him up, and next moment the gallant Bonvallot was on the floor, half-stunned, bleeding from a wound on his forehead, and with Rochefort kneeling across him, a knee on each arm so as to keep him still.

“Now see what you have done,” said the victor. “You might have killed yourself. The wound is nothing, however, and you can charge for it in the bill.”

Bonvallot heaved a few inches as though trying to rise, then lay still.

“There is no use in resisting,” went on the Count, “you have no chance against me, Monsieur Bonvallot, nor have I any wish to harm you. Besides, you will be well paid by me and that wound on your forehead will prove that you did your duty like a man. Now turn on your face, I wish to tie your hands for appearance’s sake.”

Bonvallot in turning made an attempt to break loose and rise, but the Count’s science was too much for him. Literally sitting on his back, or rather on his shoulder-blades, Rochefort, with a strip of the sheet which he took from his pocket, tied the captive’s wrists together. Then he tied the ankles.

“Monsieur,” said Bonvallot, craning his face round, “I make no further resistance, but for the love of the Virgin, bind my knees together and also gag me so that it may be seen that I did my duty.”

“Rest assured,” said Rochefort.

He bound the unfortunate’s knees and elbows, made a gag out of a handkerchief and put it in his mouth. Then, taking ten louis from his pocket, he showed them to the trussed one, and dropped them one by one into the water-pitcher.

Then he took Bonvallot’s keys, left the cell, opened the door of Ferminard’s prison and found that gentleman seated on his bed, a vague figure in the light of the moon, a few stray beams of which were struggling through the window.

“_Mordieu_!” said Ferminard, “what has happened?”

Rochefort, instead of replying, seized him by the arm, and half pushing, half pulling him, led him into the corridor.

“Now,” said he, “quick; we have no time to waste, I have tied up Bonvallot; but when he does not return to the guard-room they are sure to search. There he is. He is not hurt. Come, help me to pull the bed to the window.”

Ferminard, after a glance at Bonvallot lying on the floor, obeyed mechanically. They got the bed close up with the head-rail under the window. Rochefort tied the rope to the head-rail, and, standing on the bed and opening the sash, seized the bar. It came away in his hands, and then, flinging it on the bed, he seized the rope which he had coiled and flung it out.

This done, he leaned out of the window-place and looked down.

The moonlight lit the castle wall and the dangling rope and showed the black shadow of the moat, a terrific sight that made Rochefort’s stomach crawl and his throat close. This was no castle wall which he had to descend. It was like looking over the cliff at the world’s end or one of those terrific bastions of cloud which one sees sometimes banking the sky before a storm. The moonlight it was that lent this touch of vastness to the prospect below, a prospect that made the sweat stand out on the palms of Rochefort’s hands and his soul to contract on itself.

It was a prospect to be met by the unthinking end of man if one wished for any chance of success, so with a warning to Ferminard not to look before he came, and having wedged two pillows under the rope where it rested on the sill, Rochefort got one leg over the sill, straddled it, got the other leg out and then turned on his face. He was now lying on his stomach across the pillow that was forming a pad for the rope, and as bad luck would have it, a knot in the rope just at this point did not make the position any more comfortable. Then he slowly worked his body downwards till he was supported only by his elbows; supporting himself entirely with his left elbow, he seized with his right hand the rope where it rested on the cushion, gave up his elbow hold and with his left hand seized the sill.

He was hanging now with one hand grasping the sill, the other, the rope. The sill was no longer a window-sill, it was the tangible world, to release his hold upon it and to trust entirely to the rope required an effort of will far greater than one would think, so great that even the plucky mind of Rochefort refused the idea for a moment, but only for a moment, the next he was swinging loose.

But for the pad made by the pillow, the rope would have rested so close to the bevelled stone that he might not have been able to seize it. As it was, his knuckles were bruised and cut, and, as he swung in descending, now his shoulder, now his knee came in contact with the wall. As the pendulum lengthened, these oscillations became terrific. Then, all at once he recognized that the business was over; he was only fifteen feet or so from the ground.

The rope was some six feet short, and at the last few feet he dropped, landed safely and then looked up at the wall and the window from which he had come.

Looking up it seemed nothing, and as he stood watching, and just as the clock of Vincennes was chiming the quarter after eleven, he saw a leg protrude from the window, then the body of Ferminard appeared, and Rochefort held his breath as he watched the legs clutching themselves round the rope and the body swinging free. He seized the rope-end and held it to steady it. He had no reason at all, now, to fear; Ferminard seemed as cool and methodical as a spider in his movements, came down as calmly as a spider comes down its thread, released his hold at the proper moment and landed safely.

“_Mordieu_! but you did that easily,” whispered Rochefort, filled with admiration and not knowing that Ferminard’s courage was due mainly to an imagination that was not very keen and a head that vertigo did not easily affect. “Now let us keep to the shadow of the moat for a moment till that cloud comes over the moon. There are sentries on the battlements.”

“Monsieur,” whispered Ferminard, “it just occurred to me as I was coming down the rope that when our flight is discovered, they may hunt along the roads for us, but they will not warn the gates of Paris to be on the look-out for us, simply because, were we caught, some of M. de Choiseul’s agents might be at the catching, there would be talk, and the discovery might be made that we had been imprisoned secretly to keep us out of M. de Choiseul’s way.”

“_Ma foi_!” said Rochefort, “there is truth in that—however, it remains to be seen. Ah, here comes the shadow.”

A cloud was slowly drawing across the moon’s face, and in the deep shadow that swept across castle and road and country, the two fugitives scrambled from the moat, found the road and started towards Paris.