The strain, the relief, were all too great for even such nerves as Cleek’s, and if he had not laughed aloud, he knew that he must have cheered.

“Oho! you grin because one’s fingers blunder with eagerness,” hiccoughed Margot, thinking his laughter was for the trouble she had in getting the fastenings of her bodice undone.  “Peste, monsieur! may not a lady well be modestly careful, when—­Name of the devil! what’s that?”

It was the note of a whistle shrilling down the narrow passage without—­the passage where Dollops, in Apache garb, had been set on watch; and, hearing it, Cleek clamped his jaws together and breathed hard.  A single whistle—­short and sharp, such as this one was—­was the signal agreed upon that the real Clodoche was coming, and that he and Count von Hetzler had already appeared in the square beyond.

“Soul of a sloth!  Will not that hurry you, la reine?” he said excitedly, in reply to Margot’s startled question.  “It is the signal Fouchard’s son was to give when he and von Hetzler arrived at the place where I am to meet them.  Give me the paper—­quick! quick!  Tear the fastenings, if they will not come undone else.  One cannot keep a von Hetzler waiting like a lackey for a scrap of ribbon and a bit of lace.”

“Pardieu! they have kept better men than he waiting many an hour before this,” she made reply.  “But you shall have the thing in a twinkling now.  There! but one more knot, and then it is in your hands.”

And, had the fates not decreed otherwise, so, indeed, it would have been.  But then, just then, when another second would have brought the paper into view, another moment seen it shut tight in the grip of his itching fingers, disaster came and blotted out his hopes!

Without hint or warning, without sign or sound to lessen the shock of it, the trap-door behind the bar flew up and backward with a crash that sent Marise and her assistants darting away from it in shrieking alarm; a babel of excited voices sounded, a scurry of rushing feet scuffled and flashed along the shaking floor, and Merode and his followers tumbled helter-skelter into the room.

Cleek, counting on the bolt which kept them from entering the passage from the corridor of the Chateau Larouge—­forcing them to take a long, roundabout journey to “The Twisted Arm”—­had not counted on their shortening that journey by entering the passage from Fouchard’s tavern, doing, in fact, the very thing which he had declared to Margot he himself had done.  And lo! here they were, howling and crowding about him—­dirks in their hands and devils in their eyes and hearts—­and the paper not his yet!

A clamour rose as they poured in; the dancers ceased to dance; the music ceased to play; and Margot, shutting a tight clutch on the loosened part of her half-unfastened bodice, swung away from Cleek’s side, and flew in a panic to Merode.

“Gaston!” she cried, knowing from his wild look and the string of oaths and curses his followers were blurting out that something had gone amiss.  “Gaston, mon coeur!  Name of disaster! what is wrong?”