satisfying himself that there was nothing left undone which it was in
his power to do for her. Then he had gone to his own room and tried to
read during the interval of waiting. His patience was strained to the
limit when, at noon, Mercier and Dubois arrived alone. He had expected
them long before. The delay had almost prepared him to hear that his
plans had been frustrated, yet the two men who had entered, afraid of
his anger, were surprised at the calmness with which he listened to
their story.

It was not all the truth. Mercier said nothing of the amount of wine he
had drunk, nothing of his boasting. He described the men at the Lion
d'Or as truculent, easily ready to take offense, difficult to persuade.

"They began by rejoicing that a market woman was on her way to Paris to
give evidence against an aristocrat," Mercier said, "and then the devil
prompted some man to speculate whether she might not be an aristocrat in
disguise. They were for making certain, and if she were an aristocrat
they would have hanged her in the inn yard. I had to threaten to shoot
the first man who attempted to mount the stairs."

"And even then they only waited to get the better of us," said Dubois.

"They left the inn sulkily at last," Mercier went on, "but all night we
kept guard upon the stairs, wasting precious hours as it happened."

"Go on," said Latour, quietly.

"Soon after dawn we were startled by a groan from the end of a passage,
and we went to find a man lying there half dead. He had been badly
handled, near where he lay was a door opening onto stairs which went
down to the kitchens and the back entrance to the house. We went to
mademoiselle's room and found that she had gone. How it had been
accomplished neither Dubois nor I could tell, but we were both convinced
that some of the men had stolen back after leaving the inn and had taken
mademoiselle away, telling her some plausible tale to keep her silent.
We roused the sleeping inn and searched it from cellar to garret. From
the man lying in the passage we could get no coherent words, though we
wasted good brandy on him. We went to the village, and were not
satisfied until we had roused every man who had been at the Lion d'Or
that night. More hours wasted. Then we went back to the inn and found
the man revived somewhat. He declared that as he came to the top of the
stairs a man and a woman met him. Before he could utter a cry the man
seized him by the throat; he was choked