Page:Stanley Weyman--Count Hannibal.djvu/308

296 happened which he had feared. A man came from a room plump upon them, saw them, and held up his hands in horror.

“What are you doing?” he cried in a rage and with an oath. “Who set you on this?”

Tignonville’s tongue clave to the roof of his mouth. La Tribe from behind muttered something about the stable.

“And time too!” the man said. “Faugh! But how come you this way? Are you drunk? Here!” He opened the door of a musty closet beside him, “Pitch them in here, do you hear? And take them down when it is dark. Faugh. I wonder you did not carry the things though her ladyship’s room at once! If my lord had been in and met you! Now then, do as I tell you! Are you drunk?”

With a sullen air Tignonville threw in his mattress. La Tribe did the same. Fortunately the passage was ill-lighted, and there were many helpers and strange servants in the inn. The butler only thought them ill-looking fellows who knew no better.

“Now be off!” he continued irascibly. “This is no place for your sort. Be off!” And, as they moved, “Coming! Coming!” he cried in answer to a distant summons; and he hurried away on the errand which their appearance had interrupted.

Tignonville would have gone to work to recover the pallets, for the man had left the key in the door. But as he went to do so the butler looked back, and the two were obliged to make a pretence of following him. A moment, however, and he was gone; and Tignonville turned anew to regain them. A second time fortune was adverse; a door within a pace of him opened, a woman came out. She recoiled from the strange figure; her eyes met his. Unluckily the light from the room behind her fell on his face, and with a shrill cry she named him.