Part 44 (2/2)

That thought, which should have entered my thick head an hour before, sped me from the street, as if it had been a very catapult. Before I reached the corner I was running; and I ran through street after street, sweating with fear. But quickly as I went, my thoughts outpaced me. My lady was alone save for her women. The men were drilling, the Waldgrave was in the camp. The crowded state of the streets at sunset, and the number of strangers who thronged the city favoured certain kinds of crime; in a great crowd, as in a great solitude, everything is possible.

I had this in my mind. Judge, then, of my horror, when, as I approached the Ritter Stra.s.se, I became aware of a dull, roaring sound; and hastening to turn the corner, saw a large mob gathered in front of our house, and filling the street from wall to wall. The glare of torches shone on a thousand upturned faces, and flamed from a hundred cas.e.m.e.nts. At the windows, on the roofs, peering over balconies and coping-stones and gables, and looking out of doorways were more faces, all red in the torchlight. And all the time as the smoking light rose and fell, the yelling, as it seemed to me, rose and fell with it--now swelling into a stern roar of exultation, now sinking into an ugly, snarling noise, above which a man might hear his neighbour speak.

I seized the first I came to--a man standing on the skirts of the mob, and rather looking on than taking part. 'What is it?' I said, shaking him roughly by the arm. 'What is the matter here?'

'Hallo!' he answered, starting as he turned to me. 'Is it you again, my friend?'

I had hit on Herr Krapp!' Yes!' I cried breathlessly. 'What is it?

what is amiss?'

He shrugged his shoulders. 'They are hanging a spy,' he answered.

'Nothing more. Irregular, but wholesome.'

I drew a deep breath. 'Is that all?' I said.

He eyed me curiously. 'To be sure,' he said. 'What did you think it was?'

'I feared that there might be something wrong at my lady's,' I said, beginning to get my breath again. 'I left her alone at sunset. And when I saw this crowd before the house I--I could almost have cut off my hand. Thank G.o.d, I was mistaken!'

He looked at me again and seemed to reflect a moment. Then he said, 'You have not found the young woman you were seeking?'

I shook my head.

'Well, it occurred to me afterwards--but at which window did you see her?'

'At a window on the first floor; the farthest from the door,' I answered.

'The second from the door end of the house?' he asked.

'No, the third.'

He nodded with an air of quiet triumph. 'Just so!' he said. 'I thought so afterwards. But the fact is, my friend, my house ends with the second gable. The third gable-end does not belong to it, though doubtless it once did.'

'No?' I exclaimed. And for a moment I stood taken aback, cursing my carelessness. Then I stammered, 'But this third gable--I saw no door in it, Herr Krapp.'

'No, the door is in another street,' he answered. 'Or rather it opens on the churchyard at the back of St. Austin's. So you may have seen her after all. Well, I wish you well,' he continued. 'I must be going.'

The crowd was beginning to separate, moving away by twos and threes, talking loudly. The lights were dying down. He nodded and was gone; while I still stood gaping. For how did the matter stand? If I had really seen Marie at the window--as seemed possible now--and if nothing turned out to be amiss at home, then I had not been tricked after all, and the message was genuine. True she had not kept her appointment. But she might be in durance, or one of a hundred things might have frustrated her intention.

Still I could do nothing now except go home, and cutting short my speculations, I forced myself through the press, and with some labour managed to reach the door. As I did so I turned to look back, and the sight, though the people were moving away fast, was sufficiently striking. Almost opposite us in a beetling archway, the bowed head and shoulders of a man stood up above the common level. There was a little s.p.a.ce round him, whence men held back; and the red glow of the smouldering links which the executioners had cast on the ground at his feet, shone upwards on his swollen lips and starting eyeb.a.l.l.s. As I looked, the body seemed to writhe in its bonds; but it was only the wind swayed it. I went in shuddering.

On the stairs I met Count Hugo coming down, and knew the moment I saw him that there was something wrong. He stopped me, his eyes full of wrath.

'My man,' he said sternly, 'I thought that you were to be trusted!

Where have you been? What have you been doing? _Donner!_ Is your lady to be left at dark with no one to man this door?'

Conscience-stricken, I muttered that I hoped nothing had gone amiss.

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