The Knight of Maison-Rouge_ A Novel of Marie Antoinette - Alexandre Dumas [116]
“We’ll look in her bed, under her bed, up her chimney, and in her cupboards,” said Lorin. “After that, if there’s no one but her, we’ll wish her good night.”
“No, we won’t,” said the man from the police. “We’ll arrest her. Citizeness Geneviève Dixmer was an aristocrat who has been recognized as the accomplice of the Tison girl and the Knight of Maison-Rouge.”
“You open up then,” said Maurice, handing over the key. “I don’t arrest women.”
The man from the police gave Maurice a sidelong glance, and the grenadiers muttered among themselves.
“Oh! So you’re whispering now?” said Lorin. “Whisper for the two of us, then, while you’re at it. I share Maurice’s view.” And he took a step back.
The grey man grabbed the key and turned it sharply, and the door yielded. The soldiers rushed into the room. Two candles were burning on a small table, but Geneviève’s room, like that of the Knight of Maison-Rouge, was uninhabited.
“Empty!” cried the man from the police.
“Empty!” cried Maurice, turning pale. “Where can she be?”
Lorin looked at Maurice in shock.
“Search!” said the man from the police. With the militia in tow, he began to turn the entire house upside down, from the cellars to the workshops.
Scarcely had they turned their backs when Maurice, who had watched them go with great impatience, also launched himself into the bedroom, opening cupboards he had already opened and calling in a voice full of anguish, “Geneviève! Geneviève!”
But Geneviève did not reply. Her room really was empty. Maurice also began to comb the entire house in a sort of frenzy. Hothouses, sheds, outhouses, he went through the lot, but in vain.
Suddenly a great commotion was heard: a troop of armed men presented themselves at the door, exchanged the password with the sentry, and immediately invaded the garden before spreading through the house. At the head of the reinforcements shone the plumed panache of Santerre.
“Well then!” he said to Lorin. “Where is the conspirator?”
“What do you mean, where is the conspirator?”
“I’m asking you what you’ve done with him!”
“I might ask you yourself: if your detachment had been guarding the exits properly they would surely have arrested him, since he was no longer in the house when we went in.”
“What are you saying, there?” cried the furious general. “You mean you let him get away?”
“We couldn’t let him get away, since we never had him to begin with.”
“Then I don’t get it,” said Santerre.
“What?”
“What you said to me through your envoy.”
“We sent you an envoy, did we?”
“Of course you did. That fellow with the brown coat and the black hair and green glasses who came to alert us on your behalf that you were on the point of nabbing Maison-Rouge but that he was defending himself like a lion. When I heard that, I came running.”
“A fellow in a brown coat, black hair, and green glasses?” Lorin repeated.
“No doubt about it, with a woman on his arm.”
“Young, pretty?” cried Maurice rushing over to the general.
“Young, pretty. Yes.”
“It was the man himself and citizeness Dixmer.”
“What man?”
“Maison-Rouge … Oh! Miserable wretch that I am not to have killed both of them!”
“Come, come, citizen Lindey,” said Santerre. “We’ll catch up with them.”
“But how the hell did you let them pass?” said Lorin.
“Hell’s bells!” said Santerre. “I let them pass because they had the password.”
“They had the password!” cried Lorin. “But that means there’s a traitor among us!”
“No, no, citizen,” said Santerre. “Everyone knows who you are, and we know there are no traitors among you.”
Lorin looked all around him as though searching for the traitor whose existence he had just proclaimed. He met the somber brow and vacillating gaze of Maurice.
“Oh!” he murmured to himself. “What can this this mean?”
“The man can’t be far,” said Santerre. “Turn the neighborhood inside out. Maybe he’s fallen into the hands of some patrol cleverer than us who won’t have let themselves be had.”
“Yes, yes; we’ll keep looking,” said Lorin.
He grabbed Maurice by the arm and dragged him out of the