They set up a many-throated cheer and flocked out with her upon the floor; and in one instant feet were flying, skirts were whirling, laughter and jest mingling with waving arms and kicking toes, and the whole place was in one mad riot of delirious joy.

And in the midst of this there rolled up suddenly a voice crying, as from the bowels of the earth, “Hola!  Hola!  La la! loi!” the cry of the Apache to his kind.

“Mother of delights!  It is one of us, and it comes from the sewer passage—­from the sewer!” shrilled out Marise, as the dancers halted and Margot ran, with fleet steps, towards the bar.  “Listen! listen!  They come to you, Margot—­Serpice and Gaston.  The work is done.”

“And before even Clodoche or von Hetzler have arrived!” she replied excitedly.  “Give them light, give them welcome.  Be quick!”

Marise ducked down, loosened the fastenings of the trap-door, flung it back, and, leaning over the gap with a light in her hand, called down into the darkness, “Hola!  Hola!  La! la! loi!  Come on, comrades, come on!”

The caller obeyed instantly.  A hand reached up and gripped the edge of the flooring, and out of the darkness into the light emerged the figure of a man in a leather cap and the blue blouse of a mechanic—­a pale, fox-faced, fox-eyed fellow, with lank, fair hair, a brush of ragged, yellow beard, and with the look and air of the sneak and spy indelibly branded upon him.

It was Cleek.

“Clodoche!” exclaimed Marise, falling back in surprise.

“Clodoche!” echoed Margot.  “Clodoche—­and from the sewers?”

“Yes—­why not?” he answered, his tongue thick-burred with the accent of Alsace, his shifting eyes flashing toward the huge window behind the bar, where, in the moonlight, the narrow passage leading down to the door of “The Twisted Arm” gaped evilly between double rows of scowling, thief-sheltering houses.  “Name of the fiend!  Is this the welcome you give the bringer of fortune, Margot?”

“But from the sewer?” she repeated.  “It is incomprehensible, cher ami.  You were to pilot von Hetzler over from the Cafe Dupin to the square beyond there”—­pointing to the window—­“to leave him waiting a moment while you came on to see if it were safe for him to enter; and now you come from the sewer—­from the opposite direction entirely!”

“Mother of misfortunes!  You had done the same yourself—­you, Lantier; you, Clopin; you, Cadarousse; any of you—­had you been in my boots,” he made answer.  “I stole a leaf from your own book, earlier in the evening.  Garotted a fellow with jewels on him—­in the Rue Noir, near the Market Place—­and nearly got into ‘the stone bottle’ for doing it.  He was a decoy, set there by the police for some of you fellows, and there was a sergeant de ville after me like a whirlwind.  I was not fool enough to turn the chase in this direction, so I doubled and twisted until it was safe to dive into