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.