Page:Weird Tales volume 33 number 04.djvu/20

 Songs: "How beautiful are thy feet with shoes, O Prince's daughter!" Truly, they were beautiful; slim, high-arched, narrow-heeled, with long toes straight and slender as the fingers of a well-kept hand.

subdued rattle of limoge cups on a silver tray called his attention the old servant entered with a pot of steaming chocolate and a plate of biscuit.

The girl faced him across the orange points that flickered at the candle-tips, chocolate pitcher poised above a cup. "You are not Parisian, Citizen?" she hazarded. "Your accent"

"No, Mademoiselle"

"We do not say Monsieur Madame or Mademoiselle now, Citizen. The Convention has decreed that we are citizens and citizenesses, no more."

"I am American, Mademoiselle," he answered, ignoring the rebuke.

"Ah? One understands, then. I had thought perhaps you were a cidevant" She stopped abruptly, as if frightened at the boldness of her own words, and flashed a bright, hard look at him. Then she smiled again, and the hardness melted. "But no, one need not fear; did not you rescue me from them?"

He drew his brows down in a thoughtful frown. "Them?" he wondered. "Who were they?" Twice tonight he'd heard references to mysterious "them." The old servant had feared the girl had fallen into "their" hands; he had rescued her from "them," it seemed.

"You mean the robbers who accosted you"

"They were no robbers, Monsieur." She dropped the masquerade of Revolutionary nomenclature and spoke with the polite formality of the old regime. "They were agents of General Security." There was challenging defiance in her tone, as if the simple statement implied: "And aren't you sorry that you interfered, now? Don't you want to run away, before they come again and find you with me?"

"Oh, so they were Robespierre's bullies? Well, I think one of them will never trouble you or anyone again; too bad I didn't know, I could have finished both of them"

Thunderingly, the knocking at the door broke through his words. "Open—open in the name of the Republic!"

Her face drained white as if she had been dead an hour. He saw her palsied fingers crawling up her throat, clamping suddenly against her lips to stifle back a cry. "They—they have traced me"

"Quiet, Mademoiselle!" Mordecai was on his feet and blowing out the candles. The heavy draperies at the windows masked them from the outside, he was sure, but there must be no glow behind him when he went to the door.

"Monsieur, you must not go; you must flee, and quickly! They will take you to the conciergerie, to the Tribunal, the chopper"

He laughed, low, harshly. "Remain here, if you please, Mademoiselle. I will outface them."

Stamping angrily, he crossed the little entrance hall. "Well?" he challenged as he flung the portal open. "What is this annoyance, Citizens? Cannot a man sleep quietly in his house"

The tattered little commissaire of police and his ragged pikemen gaped as Mordecai glared at them. This tall, wide-shouldered man with the tan of sun and sea on him, cold, dominant blue