"If your excellency pleases--"
"I do not please!" I said sternly, believing that I knew what
had happened. "Is he dead?"
"No, your excellency; but, he has escaped."
"Escaped? From that room?"
Maignan nodded.
"Then, PAR DIEU!" I replied, "the man who was on guard shall
suffer in his place! Escaped? How could he escape except by
treachery? Where was the guard?"
"He was there, excellency. And he says that no one passed him."
"Yet the man is gone?"
"The room is empty."
"But the window--the window, fool, is fifty feet from the
ground!" I said. "And not so much footing outside as would hold
a crow!"
Maignan shrugged his shoulders, and in a rage I bade him follow
me, and went myself to view the place; to which a number of my
people had already flocked with lights, so that I found some
difficulty in mounting the staircase. A very brief inspection,
however, sufficed to confirm my first impression that Vilain
could have escaped by the door only; for the window, though it
lacked bars and boasted a tiny balcony, hung over fifty feet of
sheer depth, so that evasion that way seemed in the absence of
ladder or rope purely impossible.
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