He withdrew the pistol as the woman approached, so that it could not be snatched from his hand; and then the bolt grated rustily out of its socket and the door swung open. Hanaud passed through the doorway and hung the lantern upon a nail. He stood in a small square cellar lined with plaster which was flaking off from the brick walls, and no air entered it but through the Judas and beneath the door. It was at once stiflingly close, clammily damp. Shut that heavy door and close the Judas fast, and it was a dungeon as black as night itself. The woman who had unbarred the door had retreated to the corner at the right of the door, and crouched huddled with her companions. There were three of them, all women—a young girl with a sullen face and jet black hair who crouched on the ground, a woman of middle age, broad and big and strong as a man, with hands covered with clay, and the widow Chicholle herself, a ghoul of a woman with eyes sunk deep in a face which was splashed with black as though even before her death her body had begun to corrupt. Though she shuffled in carpet slippers, she wore an old dress of black silk, as the “patronne” of such a house should, and in spite of its shabbiness, with its trimmings and bugles of a past day, it added a nightmare touch of incongruity to the scene.
“I have done her no harm, m’sieu,” she whined, and “You can see.”
“No, indeed! You have given her a fine boudoir to rest in whilst her bedroom was being prepared next door, eh, widow?” Hanaud cried with a savage irony, and the old woman shrank from him whimpering excuses and promises.
“Ah, there are others high up in the world more to blame than me! Come now! I am a poor woman … and ignorant too. … What should I do when those great ones order me … terrify me … ? Oh, I shall tell you about them—very sure, I shall tell you. … They are wicked ones, trust me—” and with a snarl Hanaud cut her short.
“And that?” he cried, thrusting out his arm.
Over his shoulder Mr. Ricardo saw a noose and a foot or so of rope dangling from a hook driven into the low ceiling to hold a lamp. “That pretty necklace goes very well with the boudoir! A present for a good girl, eh, widow? Monsieur!” and he turned to a man in the doorway who waited with an air of authority. “Those animals are for you.”
As this man and two of his assistants filed into the cellar and surrounded the three women, the corner opposite to the door became visible to Mr. Ricardo; and in that corner, as far as possible from the widow Chicholle and her confederates, huddled against the wall, stood Joyce Whipple.
And in such strange guise that Mr. Ricardo was toppled from amazement to amazement. Was he standing on his head or on his heels? Verily, the whole world was upside down. The odd fact, to be sure, that Joyce Whipple had left her glittering frock behind on the night when she had disappeared was now accounted for. But it was only accounted for by a circumstance still more unaccountable. Joyce was dressed now in what seemed to Mr. Ricardo a boy’s Sunday suit of black velvet, knee breeches, black silk stockings and all. Certainly the black satin shoes she was wearing were her own—the imprints in the garden of Suvlac had demonstrated that. But the meaning of her masquerade was quite unintelligible to Mr. Ricardo. To make her attire still more remarkable she wore over the velvet suit, a sort of short surcoat of a scarlet hue. It had no sleeves and was cut low at the shoulders, to slip over the head like a jumper, and it reached just to her hips. A surcoat, such as pages wore in medieval days—yes, that was it—or a short cassock in scarlet.
“It is all very peculiar,” Mr. Ricardo began to say to himself, but he looked at Joyce Whipple’s face, and a wave of pity and horror swept over him which made him forget everything but the extremity of her distress. Her eyes, wild with terror, blazed out of a white and twitching face. She trembled so that it was a miracle that she could stand, and with her hair and her dress dishevelled and soiled with plaster and dust she gazed from face to face quite distraught. But her eyes lighted upon Ricardo. He was the only one in all that company whom she had ever seen before; and her eyes stayed upon him and recognition struggled with doubt and gradually mastered it.
“It is you! You!” she said from a throat dry and hoarse with thirst, so that though she cried aloud a murmur would have drowned her cry. Suddenly she stretched out her hands to him, and he saw that they were handcuffed together at the wrists.
“Take them off my hands,” she implored, and she shook her arms so that the links of the chain rattled. “Oh, please! Quick! Oh, I shall die of fear.”
But Hanaud was already at her side.
“Courage, mademoiselle! See, it is done! You are free!”
“Yes,” she whispered, separating her arms and joining them and separating them again, incredulous of her release. “Yes, I am free.”
Hanaud removed his eyes from her to the handcuffs in his hands. He turned them over and bent his head down to them and nodded to himself.
“Moreau! Look here! And here!” He pointed to some marks upon the steel, and an exclamation broke from Moreau.
“They are the property of the State,” he cried. “Ah! Ah! They are of an insolence, those fine fellows!”
“But it was to be expected, Moreau,” said Hanaud very softly. “Let us not lose our heads! Handcuffs, after all, don’t grow upon the bushes. No, when we want
