Part 36 (1/2)

At Rue Bezout the girl turned to the left, crossed over, and ran rather than walked towards Avenue Montsouris. Jean ran until he reached the corner, then cautiously peeped around it. Had he not done so he would have come upon her, for she had stopped within two metres and fumbled nervously with a package. He could hear her panting and murmuring in her deep voice. She tore the string from the package with her teeth and threw the paper wrapper on the ground.

It was a bottle of bluish liquid.

His heart stood still as he saw it; his legs almost failed him. If he had seen the intended victim of this diabolical design approaching at that moment he felt that he would scarcely have the strength to cry out in warning, so overwhelmed was he with the horror of it.

What should he do? Would they come this way, or by Montsouris? He might fall upon her suddenly,--overpower her where she stood!

Jean softly peeped once more around the angle of the wall. She was trying to extract the cork from the bottle with a pair of tiny scissors, but, being half frantic with haste and pa.s.sion, she had only broken one point after the other.

A sweet and silvery laugh behind him sent his heart into his throat.

It was Lerouge and Mlle. Remy coming leisurely along the Rue Halle. It was now or----

But a second glance over his shoulder showed that they had turned down the narrow Rue Dareau. Madeleine had made a mistake.

Almost at the same instant a piercing shriek of agony burst upon the night. The scream seemed to split his ears, so near was it, so deep the pain and terror of it.

And there lay the miserable woman writhing on the walk, tearing out great wisps of her dark hair in her intolerable suffering, and filling the air with heart-rending cries of distress.

CHAPTER IX

Jean Marot was not, as has been seen, an extraordinary type of his countrymen. Sensitive, sympathetic, impulsive, pa.s.sionate, extreme in all things, he embodied in method and temperament the characteristics of his race.

His first impulse upon realizing what had befallen the misguided girl of Rue Monge was the impulse common to humanity. But as he flew to her succor he saw others running from various directions, attracted by her cries and moved by the same motive.

To be found there would not only be useless but dangerous,--for the girl as well as for himself. Therefore he discreetly took to his heels.

Flight at such a moment is confession of guilt. So it followed quite naturally that a comprehension of what had happened sent a considerable portion of the first-comers after the fleeing man.

”a.s.sa.s.sin!”

”Vitrioleur!”

”Stop him!”

These are very inspiring cries with a clamorous French mob to howl them. To be caught under such circ.u.mstances is to run imminent risk of summary punishment. And the vitriol-thrower is not an uncommon feature of Parisian criminal life; there would be little hesitation where one is caught, as it were, red-handed.

Jean ran these possibilities through his mind as he dashed down a side street into the Avenue Montsouris. Fear did not exactly lend him wings, but it certainly did not r.e.t.a.r.d his flight. And he had the additional advantage that he was not yelling at every jump and lost no time in false direction. He doubled by way of Rue Dareau, cut into Rue de la Tombe-Issoire over the net-work of railway tracks, and then dropped into a walk. But not so soon that he escaped the observation of a police agent standing in the shadow in the next narrow turning towards the railway station. The officer heard his panting breath long before Jean got near him, and rightly conjectured that the student was running away from something. To detain him for an explanation was an obvious duty.

”Well, now! Monsieur seems to be in a hurry,” said he, as he suddenly stepped in front of the fugitive.

This official apparition would have startled even a man who was not in a hurry, but Jean quickly recovered his self-possession.

”Yes, monsieur; I go for a doctor. A sick----”

”Pardon! but you have just pa.s.sed the hospital. That won't do, young man!”

The agent made a gesture to seize his suspect, but at that moment Jean saw two other agents in the distance walking rapidly to join their comrade. He upper-cut the man sharply, catching him squarely on the point of the chin and sending him to gra.s.s with a mangled and bleeding tongue.