Page:Stanley Weyman--Count Hannibal.djvu/302

290 “Ay, if! But it is not every floor has a trap!”

“We could take up a board.”

The minister raised his eyebrows.

“We could take up a board!” the younger man repeated; and he stepped the mean chamber from end to end, his eyes on the floor. “Or—yes, mon Dieu!” with a change of attitude, “we might break through the roof?” And, throwing back his head, he scanned the cobwebbed surface of laths which rested on the unceiled joists.

“Umph!”

“Well, why not, Monsieur? Why not break through the ceiling?” Tignonville repeated, and in a fit of energy he seized his companion’s shoulder and shook him. “Stand on the bed, and you can reach it.”

“And the floor which rests on it!”

“Par Dieu, there is no floor! ’Tis a cockloft above us! See there! And there!” And the young man sprang on the bed, and thrust the rowel of a spur through the laths.

La Tribe’s expression changed. He rose slowly to his feet.

“Try again!” he said.

Tignonville, his face red, drove the spur again between the laths, and worked it to and fro until he could pass his fingers into the hole he had made. Then he gripped and bent down a length of one of the laths, and, passing his arm as far as the elbow through the hole, moved it this way and that. His eyes, as he looked down at his companion through the falling rubbish, gleamed with triumph.

“Where is your floor now?” he asked.

“You can touch nothing?”

“Nothing. It’s open. A little more and I might touch the tiles.” And he strove to reach higher.

For answer La Tribe gripped him. “Down! Down, Monsieur,” he muttered. “They are bringing our dinner.”

Tignonville thrust back the lath as well as he could, and