Page:Stanley Weyman--Count Hannibal.djvu/245

Rh “Well said, Monsieur, where?” Perrot rejoined in a tone of triumph. “There lies the point. In the stables, where will be sleeping men, and a snorer on every truss? No, but in a fairway between two stables where the water at its entrance runs clear in a stone channel; a channel deepened in one place that they may draw for the chambers above with a rope and a bucket. The rooms above are the best in the house, four in one row, opening all on the gallery; which was uncovered, in the common fashion until Queen-Mother Jezebel, passing that way to Nantes, two years back, found the chambers draughty; and that end of the gallery was closed in against her return. Now, Monsieur, he and his Madame will lie there; and he will feel safe, for there is but one way to those four rooms—through the door which shuts off the covered gallery from the open part. But” he glanced up an instant and La Tribe caught the smouldering fire in his eyes—“we shall not go in by the door.”

“The bucket rises through a trap?”

“In the gallery? To be sure, monsieur. In the corner beyond the fourth door. There shall he fall into the pit which he dug for others, and the evil that he planned rebound on his own head!”

La Tribe was silent.

“What think you of it?” Tignonville asked.

“That it is cleverly planned,” the minister answered.

“No more than that?”

“No more until I have eaten.”

“Get him something!” Tignonville replied in a surly tone. “And we may as well eat, ourselves. Lead the horses into the wood. And do you, Perrot, call Tuez-les-Moines, who is forward. Two hours’ riding should bring us to La Flèche. We need not leave here, therefore, until the sun is low. To dinner! To dinner!”

Probably he did not feel the indifference he affected, for