Part 63 (1/2)
”Is that a threat, sir?” asked the young man, raising his head.
”No,” replied Morgan, in a gentle, almost supplicating voice, ”it is an entreaty.”
”Is it addressed to me in particular, or would you include others?”
”I make it to you in particular;” and the chief of the Companions of Jehu dwelt upon the last word.
”Ah!” exclaimed the young man, ”then I am so fortunate as to interest you?”
”As a brother,” replied Morgan, in the same soft, caressing tone.
”Well, well,” said Roland, ”this is decidedly a wager.”
Bourrienne entered at that moment.
”Roland,” he said, ”the First Consul wants you.”
”Give me time to conduct this gentleman to the street, and I'll be with him.”
”Hurry up; you know he doesn't like to wait.”
”Will you follow me, sir?” Roland said to his mysterious companion.
”I am at your orders, sir.”
”Come, then,” And Roland, taking the same path by which he had brought Morgan, took him back, not to the door opening on the garden (the garden was closed), but to that on the street. Once there, he stopped and said: ”Sir, I gave you my word, and I have kept it faithfully, But that there may be no misunderstanding between us, have the goodness to tell me that you understand it to have been for this one time and for to-day only.”
”That was how I understood it, sir.”
”You give me back my word then?”
”I should like to keep it, sir; but I recognize that you are free to take it back.”
”That is all I wish to know. Au revoir! Monsieur Morgan.”
”Permit me not to offer you the same wish, Monsieur de Montrevel.”
The two young men bowed with perfect courtesy, Roland re-entered the Luxembourg, and Morgan, following the line of shadow projected by the walls, took one of the little streets to the Place Saint-Sulpice.
It is he whom we are now to follow.
CHAPTER XXVI. THE BALL OF THE VICTIMS
After taking about a hundred steps Morgan removed his mask. He ran more risk of being noticed in the streets of Paris as a masked man than with uncovered face.
When he reached the Rue Taranne he knocked at the door of a small furnished lodging-house at the corner of that street and the Rue du Dragon, took a candlestick from a table, a key numbered 12 from a nail, and climbed the stairs without exciting other attention than a well-known lodger would returning home. The clock was striking ten as he closed the door of his room. He listened attentively to the strokes, the light of his candle not reaching as far as the chimney-piece. He counted ten.
”Good!” he said to himself; ”I shall not be too late.”