the, of which
she had imbibed so freely to-night, was beginning to take hold of her.
"A pretty conspirator to forget how to open the door he himself locked!
It is well I know thee; it is well it was our word in the beginning, or
I had been suspicious, silly! Wait but a moment"--putting her hand to
her breast and beginning to unfasten her bodice--"wait but a moment,
Monsieur Twitching-Fingers, and the thing shall be in your hand."

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, 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! 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, rushing feet scuffled and flashed
along the shaking floor, and Merode and his