Mlle. Fouchette Part 36

At Rue Bezout the girl turned to the left, crossed over, and ran rather than walked towards Avenue Montsouris. Jean ran until he reached the corner, then cautiously peeped around it. Had he not done so he would have come upon her, for she had stopped within two metres and fumbled nervously with a package. He could hear her panting and murmuring in her deep voice. She tore the string from the package with her teeth and threw the paper wrapper on the ground.

It was a bottle of bluish liquid.

His heart stood still as he saw it; his legs almost failed him. If he had seen the intended victim of this diabolical design approaching at that moment he felt that he would scarcely have the strength to cry out in warning, so overwhelmed was he with the horror of it.

What should he do? Would they come this way, or by Montsouris? He might fall upon her suddenly,--overpower her where she stood!

Jean softly peeped once more around the angle of the wall. She was trying to extract the cork from the bottle with a pair of tiny scissors, but, being half frantic with haste and pa.s.sion, she had only broken one point after the other.

A sweet and silvery laugh behind him sent his heart into his throat.

It was Lerouge and Mlle. Remy coming leisurely along the Rue Halle. It was now or----

But a second glance over his shoulder showed that they had turned down the narrow Rue Dareau. Madeleine had made a mistake.

Almost at the same instant a piercing shriek of agony burst upon the night. The scream seemed to split his ears, so near was it, so deep the pain and terror of it.

And there lay the miserable woman writhing on the walk, tearing out great wisps of her dark hair in her intolerable suffering, and filling the air with heart-rending cries of distress.

CHAPTER IX

Jean Marot was not, as has been seen, an extraordinary type of his countrymen. Sensitive, sympathetic, impulsive, pa.s.sionate, extreme in all things, he embodied in method and temperament the characteristics of his race.

His first impulse upon realizing what had befallen the misguided girl of Rue Monge was the impulse common to humanity. But as he flew to her succor he saw others running from various directions, attracted by her cries and moved by the same motive.

To be found there would not only be useless but dangerous,--for the girl as well as for himself. Therefore he discreetly took to his heels.

Flight at such a moment is confession of guilt. So it followed quite naturally that a comprehension of what had happened sent a considerable portion of the first-comers after the fleeing man.

"a.s.sa.s.sin!"

"Vitrioleur!"

"Stop him!"

These are very inspiring cries with a clamorous French mob to howl them. To be caught under such circ.u.mstances is to run imminent risk of summary punishment. And the vitriol-thrower is not an uncommon feature of Parisian criminal life; there would be little hesitation where one is caught, as it were, red-handed.

Jean ran these possibilities through his mind as he dashed down a side street into the Avenue Montsouris. Fear did not exactly lend him wings, but it certainly did not r.e.t.a.r.d his flight. And he had the additional advantage that he was not yelling at every jump and lost no time in false direction. He doubled by way of Rue Dareau, cut into Rue de la Tombe-Issoire over the net-work of railway tracks, and then dropped into a walk. But not so soon that he escaped the observation of a police agent standing in the shadow in the next narrow turning towards the railway station. The officer heard his panting breath long before Jean got near him, and rightly conjectured that the student was running away from something. To detain him for an explanation was an obvious duty.

"Well, now! Monsieur seems to be in a hurry," said he, as he suddenly stepped in front of the fugitive.

This official apparition would have startled even a man who was not in a hurry, but Jean quickly recovered his self-possession.

"Yes, monsieur; I go for a doctor. A sick----"

"Pardon! but you have just pa.s.sed the hospital. That won't do, young man!"

The agent made a gesture to seize his suspect, but at that moment Jean saw two other agents in the distance walking rapidly to join their comrade. He upper-cut the man sharply, catching him squarely on the point of the chin and sending him to gra.s.s with a mangled and bleeding tongue.

There appeared to be no help for it, but the young man now had two fresh pursuers. At any rate, he was free. It would be to his shame, he thought, if he could not distance two men in heavy cowhide boots, enc.u.mbered with cloaks and sabres. So he started down the Rue de la Tombe-Issoire with a lead of some two hundred yards. He saw lights and a crowd and heard music in the Place St. Jacques, and knew that he was saved.

The Place St. Jacques was en fete. A band-stand occupied the spot long sacred to the guillotine, up to its last removal to La Roquette. The immediate neighborhood of Place St. Jacques would have preferred the guillotine and an occasional execution as a holiday enjoyment, but next to witnessing the sanguinary operation of the "national razor," a dance was the popular idea of amus.e.m.e.nt. And the Parisian populace must be amused. The government considers that a part of its duty, and encourages the "bal du carrefour" by the erection of stands and providing music at the general expense. It was the saturnine humor of Place St. Jacques to dance where men lost their heads. However, it would be difficult to find a street crossing in Paris big enough to dance in that had not been through the centuries soaked with human blood.

It was a little fresher in Place St. Jacques, that was all.

The band-stand being on the exact place marked in the stone pavement for the guillotine, it gave a sort of peculiar piquancy to the occasion. While the proprietors of the adjacent wine-shops and "zincs"

grumbled at the new order of things, the young people were making the best of Mardi Gras in hilarious fas.h.i.+on.

Though Place St. Jacques presented a lively scene beneath its scattered lights, it was one common enough to Jean Marot, who now only saw in the romping crowd and spectators the means of shaking off his police pursuers. Among the hundred dancers he made his way to the most compact body of lookers-on, where the indications were that something unusually interesting was in progress. Here the blown condition of a student would not be noticed.

Yells of delight from those in his immediate vicinity awoke his curiosity to see what was the particular attraction. At the end of the figure this expression grew enthusiastic.

"Bravo! bravo!" came in chorus.

"Tres bien! tres bien!"

"It is well done, that!"

"Yes,--it is the Savatiere!"

Jean was startled for the instant, since it brought vividly back to him the beginning of his bitter day.

So it was Mlle. Fouchette.

She made, with another girl of her set, a part of a quadrille, and the pair were showing off the agile accomplishments of the semi-professionals of the Bullier and Moulin Rouge. These consisted of kicking off the nearest hats, doing the split, the guitar act, the pointed arch, and similar fantasies. Having forced his way in, Jean was instantly recognized by Mlle. Fouchette, who shook the confetti out of her blonde hair at every pose. Then, as she executed a pigeon-wing on his corner, she whispered,--

"Hold, Monsieur Jean,--wait one moment!"

"Will monsieur be good enough to take my place for the last figure?"

Her partner, a thin, serious-looking young man, had approached Jean hat in hand and addressed him with courtly politeness.

Jean protested with equal politeness,--yet the offer served his turn admirably,--no! no!--and the mademoiselle, monsieur?

"Come, then!" cried that damsel, as the last figure began, and she seized Jean by the arm and half swung him into position.

The polite monsieur immediately disappeared in the crowd.

The French are born dancers. There are young Frenchmen here who would be the admiration of the ballet-master. Frenchmen dance for the pure love of motion. They prefer an agile partner of the softer s.e.x, but it is not essential,--they will dance with each other, or even alone, and on the pavements of Paris as well as on the waxed floor of a ball-room.

Jean Marot was, like many students of the Quartier Latin, not only a lover of Terpsich.o.r.e, but proficient in the art of using his legs for something more agreeable than running. There were difficult steps and acrobatic feats introduced by Mlle. Fouchette which he could execute quite as easily and gracefully. And thus it happened that the young man who three minutes before had been fleeing the police was now swept away into the general frivolity of Place St. Jacques. In fact, he had already absolutely forgotten that he had come there a fugitive.

Mlle. Fouchette had just joyously challenged him to make the "arc aux pieds" with her,--which is to pose foot against foot in midair while the other dancers pa.s.s beneath,--when Jean noticed a keen-eyed police agent looking at him attentively.

[Ill.u.s.tration: SHE SEIZED JEAN BY THE ARM]