I had
already got one leg over the window-sill, when I remembered the
handkerchief filled with money under my pillow. I could well have
afforded to leave it behind me, but I was revengefully determined
that the miscreants of the gambling-house should miss their
plunder as well as their victim. So I went back to the bed and
tied the heavy handkerchief at my back by my cravat.
Just as I had made it tight and fixed it in a comfortable place,
I thought I heard a sound of breathing outside the door. The
chill feeling of horror ran through me again as I listened. No!
dead silence still in the passage--I had only heard the night air
blowing softly into the room. The next moment I was on the
window-sill--and the next I had a firm grip on the water-pipe
with my hands and knees.
I slid down into the street easily and quietly, as I thought I
should, and immediately set off at the top of my speed to a
branch "Prefecture" of Police, which I knew was situated in the
immediate neighborhood. A "Sub-prefect," and several picked men
among his subordinates, happened to be up, maturing, I believe,
some scheme for discovering the perpetrator of a mysterious
murder which all Paris was talking of just then. When I began my
story, in a breathless hurry and in very bad French, I could see
that the Sub-prefect suspected me of being a drunken Englishman
who had robbed somebody; but he soon altered his opinion as I
went on, and before I had anything like concluded, he shoved all
the papers before him into a drawer, put on his hat, supplied me
with another (for I was bareheaded), ordered a file of soldiers,
desired his expert followers to get ready all sorts of tools for
breaking open doors and ripping up brick flooring, and took my
arm, in the most friendly and familiar manner possible, to lead
me with him out of the house.
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