"
A choked, frightened cry from Miss Falconer made me wheel about sharply,
to find her staring not a me, but at the further wall. Prepared now for
anything under heaven, I followed her gaze. Above us, circling the whole
hall, there ran a gallery from which at a distance of some fifteen feet
from where we stood a wide stone staircase descended; and half-way down
this, as motionless as statues, as indistinct as shadows, I saw four men
in the uniform of officers of France.
For an uncanny moment I wondered whether they were specters. For a
stupid one, I thought they might be people whom the girl had come here
to meet. Still, if they were, she wouldn't be looking at them in this
paralyzed fashion. I could not see them plainly,--but they must be the
men from Bleau.
"Well, Mr. Bayne," the foremost was asking, "did you think we had
deserted you? Not a bit of it! We came on ahead and rang up the old
woman there and commandeered her keys. We've been killing time here for
a good half hour, waiting for you. You must have had tire trouble. And
you don't seem very pleased to see us now that you've come--eh, what?"
At Bleau the previous night, I was recalling dazedly, there had been
only three men wearing the horizon blue.
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