"Hush," said I, as a man came around the angle and along the narrow
way between us and the garden wall.
"Wait, monsieur; he will come again." In some ten minutes he
reappeared, as before.
"Now," said Merton, and in a pour of wildly driven rain Alphonse
disappeared. He found his way through the wood and in to the main
avenue, which in front of the gate turned to the left and passed
around the farther side of the grounds. Then he walked up to the gate.
Before long we heard words of complaint. Would the guards tell
her--This was all gleefully related afterward. She had lost her way.
Yes, a little glass of absinthe--only one. She was not used to it. And
she had the money for her market sales, and alas! so she was all wrong
and must go back. The guards laughed. No doubt it was the absinthe.
The old woman was reeling now and then. Wouldn't one of them show her
the way? No. And was it down the avenue? Yes. With this she set off
unsteadily along the road to the left. They called out that it was the
wrong way, and then, laughing, dismissed her.
When once around the remote angle of the wall, Alphonse slipped aside
into the forest, got rid of gown and basket, and moving through the
wood, took up his station on the side of the main avenue of approach
to the villa, and out of sight of the guards. Here he waited until a
few minutes later he was joined by the captain.
Meanwhile I stood in the wood with Merton. I think he enjoyed it. I
did not. A first attempt at burglary is not in all its aspects heroic,
and I was wet, chilled, and anxious.
"First actor on," murmured Merton. "Should like to have seen that
interview. Can't be actor and audience both."
I hazily reflected that for myself I was both, and that the actor had
just then a sharp fit of stage-scare. I let him run on unanswered,
while the rain poured down my back.