United States or Panama ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Isn't Dalbreque dominated by the memory of it? The house, which is certainly the one in which Rose Andree spent the summer, was empty. He has shut her up there." "But the house, you told me, was in the Seine-inferieure." "Well, so are we! To the left of the river, the Eure and the forest of Brotonne; to the right, the Seine-inferieure.
Next morning he learnt from Adolphe that Dalbreque, on the previous evening, after all the lights were out, had carried down a bicycle from his room and mounted it and had not returned until shortly before sunrise. The bicycle tracks led Renine to the uninhabited Chateau des Landes, five miles from the village.
Renine, who had at first followed them, in order to find out what was going to happen, changed his mind and was now standing with his eyes fixed on the ground. The fall of the bicycle had unfastened the parcel which Dalbreque had tied to the handle-bar; and the newspaper had burst, revealing its contents, a tin saucepan, rusty, dented, battered and useless.
Almost as soon as I set eyes upon it, I remembered that people use those articles to bale out the bottoms of leaky boats. Why, there was bound to be a boat in the Landes woods! How was it I never thought of that? But of course Dalbreque made use of her to cross the Seine! And, as she made water, he brought a saucepan." "Then Rose Andree ...?" asked Hortense.
Renine, seeing that the game was up, ran after the others and called out: "Stop him!" He came up with them just as Dalbreque, after regaining his feet, knocked one of the policemen down and levelled his revolver. Renine snatched it out of his hands. But the two other detectives, startled, had also produced their weapons. They fired.
"By Jove!" muttered Renine. "What's the matter?" In front of the cafe was a small terrace bordered on the right and left by spindle-trees planted in boxes, which were connected by a paling. Behind the shrubs, sitting on a bank but stooping forward so that they could see Dalbreque through the branches, were four men. "Police!" said Renine. "What bad luck!
Dalbreque stepped back, at once assuming the defensive: "What do you want? Who said you could...." "Silence!" whispered Renine, with an imperious gesture. "It's all up with you!" "What are you talking about?" growled the man, angrily. "Lean out of your window. There are four men below on the watch for you to leave, four detectives."
They disappeared in a rocky path which ran beside the park down to the Seine, opposite the Jumieges peninsula. Next night, he took up his position there. At eleven o'clock, Dalbreque climbed a bank, scrambled over a wire fence, hid his bicycle under the branches and moved away. It seemed impossible to follow him in the pitchy darkness, on a mossy soil that muffled the sound of footsteps.
One of them, however, having cast a glance through the spindle-trees, caught sight of Dalbreque just as he reached the bottom of the staircase. He gave the alarm and darted forward, followed by his comrades, but had to run round the car and bumped into the chauffeur, which gave Dalbreque time to mount his bicycle and cross the yard unimpeded. He thus had some seconds' start.
"Take off your glove and give me your hand to kiss," Renine ordered. "You promised that you would." "Oh!" said Hortense. "But it was to be when Dalbreque was saved." "He is saved." "Not yet. The police are after him. They may catch him again. He will not be really saved until he is with Rose Andree." "He is with Rose Andree," he declared. "What do you mean?" "Turn round." She did so.
Word Of The Day