“The truth, mon roi, the truth!  Mother of disasters!  It is not the cracksman—­it is the real Clodoche we have killed!”

For one moment a sort of panic held them, swayed them, befogged the brains of them; then, of a sudden, Merode howled out, “Get back!  Get back!  The fellow’s in there still!” and led a blind race down the passage to the bar, where they had seen Cleek last.  It was still in darkness; but an eager hand gripping the lever, turned on the gas again, and matches everywhere were lifted to the jets.

And when the light flamed out and the room was again ablaze they knew that they might as well hope to call back yesterday as dream of finding Cleek again.  For there on the floor, her limp hands turned palms upward, a chloroformed cloth folded over her mouth and nose, lay, in a deep stupor, the figure of Margot, her bodice torn wide open and the paper forever gone!

* * * * *

It was five minutes later when the Count von Hetzler, crouching back in the shadow of the square and waiting for the return of Clodoche, heard a dull, whirring sound that was unmistakably the purr of a motor throb through the stillness; and, leaning forward, saw an automobile whirl up out of the darkness, cut across the square, and dash off westward like a flash.  Yet in the brief instant it took to go past the place where he waited there was time for him to catch the sharp click of a lowered window, see the clear outlines of a man’s face looking out, and to hear a voice from within the vehicle speak.

“Herr Count,” it said in clear, incisive tones.  “A positively infallible recipe for the invasion of England:  Wait until the Channel freezes and then skate over.  Good night!”

“One for his nob that, Gov’nor—­my hat, yuss!” said Dollops, with a shrill laugh, as he stuck a red head and a face all shiny with cocoa butter and half-removed grease-paint out of the window, and, despite the fact that the swift pace of the automobile had already carried it far past the place where the count had been in hiding, made a fan of his five fingers and his snub nose.  “Oh, Mother ’Ubbard!  Did you see him, sir?  Bunked back in his ’ole like somebody had ‘give him the hook,’ and cleared the blessed stage before the eggs began to fly.  I don’t think them Germans ‘ull be sittin’ on the steps of St. Paul’s this year, sir—­not them!”

Cleek laughed; and, ordering the boy to shut down the window and get on with the work of changing his clothes, set about doing the same thing himself.

“I suppose you know, you clever little monkey, that I should have been floating down the Seine with a slit throat and enough lead in me to sink a barrel by this time, if it hadn’t been for you,” he said, as he pushed the outward semblance of Clodoche into the kit-bag, and began to get into ordinary civilian’s dress as expeditiously as possible.  “If you had slipped up—­if you had been one-half minute late—­or if that fellow had had a chance to make one cry before you covered his mouth—­”