He bent down beside her in the shadows, felt the bars of the narrow grating overgrown with herbage, pulled upward and lifted it easily from its grassy bed. Philippa placed her hand flat on the dewy turf, and vaulted down into darkness. He balanced himself on the edge of the hole, turned and pulled the grating toward him, and dropped. The grating fell with a soft thud on the damp and grassy rim of the manhole. Philippa caught his hand.
"I know my way! Come!" she breathed, and he followed into the pitchy darkness.
How far they had progressed he had no idea, when she halted and drew him close to her.
"I've lost my way; I thought I could find the main corridor. Have you a match?"
"I have a flashlight."
He pulled it from his pocket and drew his pistol also. Then he snapped on the light.
For a moment the girl stood dazzled and perplexed, evidently unfamiliar with what she was gazing at, bewildered.
But Warner knew. There, in front of him, stood the great tun, swung open like a gate, and between it and the next cask ran the secret alley blocked by the door from which Wildresse had driven Asticot and Squelette.
"I know the way now!" he said. "But we'll have to pass through the cafe----"
He sprang back with the words on his lips as the door opened violently and Wildresse lurched out, followed by Asticot and another man.
But the glare of the torch in their eyes checked them and they recoiled, stumbling over each other in the narrow doorway.
Step by step Warner backed away, keeping Philippa behind him and focussing the blinding light on the men huddled in the doorway.
"Who are you?" demanded Wildresse hoarsely. "What are you doing in my cellar?"
He made a motion toward his breast pocket; Asticot was quicker, and he fired full at the flashlight which Warner was holding wide of himself and Philippa.
The bullet struck the light; startling darkness buried them, instantly all a-flicker again with pistol flashes.
"The grating again! Can you find it, Philippa?" he whispered.
She turned her head as she retreated, caught a glimpse of the faint spot of starlight behind, took his hand and drew him around.
Evidently Wildresse dared not use any light; his friends were shooting wildly and at hazard for general results; the racket in the vaulted place was deafening; but the flashes from their own pistols must have obscured their vision, for if they could have distinguished the far, pale spot of light under the manhole, they evidently did not see the dim figures crouching there.
Warner reached up, grasped the iron bars, lifted them, swung them open. Then he dragged himself up and over, and, flat on the grass, held down his arms for Philippa.
Beside him, panting on the grass, she lay flat under the dim luster of the stars, while they searched the dusk for any sign of the two men who had landed from the rowboat.
And all at once the girl's eyes fell upon a ladder leaning against the house, and she silently touched Warner on the arm.
It became plain enough now; the rope was gone; the men had mounted to the room, found it empty, had unbolted both doors, and started Wildresse and his crew toward the cellar--the only egress to the street--where lay their only chance of successful pursuit.
Bending low above the grass, gliding close to the shrubs and bushes, Warner, with Philippa's hand clasped in his, stole down the slope and into the shadow of the shoreward trees.
A boat, with both oars in it, lay there, pulled up into the sedge; the girl stepped in; Warner pushed off and followed her, shipped the oars, swung the boat, and bent to his work.
"You are taking the wrong way!" whispered Philippa.
"Halkett is waiting on the quay."
Already they had rounded the bank in sight of the ancient arch of the bridge; the quay wall rose above them in the starlight. At the foot of the narrow flight of steps he checked the boat; Philippa took the oars, and he sprang out and ran up the stone incline.
"Halkett!" he called sharply.
A figure seated on the wall turned its head, jumped to the pavement, and came striding swiftly.
"Have you discovered her whereabouts? Good heavens! Where are your clothes, Warner?"
"I've found Philippa. She's waiting below in a boat----"
They ran down the steps while they were speaking, and Philippa cried:
"Is it you, Halkett? I am happy again!" And stretched out her slender bare arm to him, excited, trembling a little from the nervous reaction which now suddenly filled her eyes and set her disfigured mouth quivering.
"Awf'lly glad," said Halkett heartily, clasping her offered hand in his firm cool grip; and if he was astonished at her negligee he did not betray it, but took the oars with decision and sent the boat shooting out into mid-current.
"Philippa," he said, pulling downstream with powerful strokes through the darkness, "I don't know what has happened; Warner got you out of the mess, whatever it was; but what I do know is that you behaved like a brick and I shall never forget it! A soldier's thanks, little comrade, for what you did!"
"I--I am--happy----" she faltered; and her voice failed her. She slid from the stern down against Warner's knees, and buried her face in her bare arms against them.
"Do you think you could spare her your coat, old fellow?" asked Warner in a low voice.
"Of course!" Halkett stripped off his coat and passed it over; then he gave his waistcoat to Warner.
"Lucky it's a warm night," he said cheerfully, while Warner spread the coat over Philippa, where she lay exhausted, tremulous, and close to tears. The girl who had never whimpered when fear, timidity, and indecision meant instant disaster, now lay huddled against his knees, shaking in every limb, crushing back the tears that burned her eyes and her throat, striving to master the nerves that clamored for relief.
Warner bent over her, close, touching her disheveled hair:
"It's all right now," he whispered. "I shall not let you go again until you want to.... It's all right now, Philippa. I'll stand your friend always--as long as you need me--as long as you--want me.... Don't worry about a home; I'll see to it. You are going to have your chance."
One of her crossed hands groped blindly for his, closed over it convulsively, and her breath grew hot with tears.
"It's a long way to Tipperary," remarked Halkett cheerily. "Tell me about it when you're ready, old chap."
*CHAPTER XIX*
About seven o'clock the next morning Halkett knocked at Warner's door, awakening him.
"The cavalry are passing, if you'd care to see them," he said.
Warner got out of bed, found his slippers and a bathrobe, and opened the door. Halkett, fully dressed in the field uniform of a British officer, came in.
"Hello!" exclaimed the American in surprise. "What does this mean?"
"It means that we've gone in, old chap."
"England!"
"Yes, we're in it! And I'm off." He made a gesture for silence. "Hark! Do you hear that?"
Warner listened: from the distance came a confused, metallic sound, growing more and more distinct, filling the room with a faint ringing, jarring harmony.
"Come to the window; it's worth seeing," said Halkett.
It was worth seeing. Through the still morning sunshine, from the southward came an immense sound wave; the rustle and clash of steel, the clink-clank of iron-shod hoofs.
Leaning from the window, Warner looked down the road. A high column of white dust stretched away into perspective as far as he could see. Under it, emerging from it, rode the French heavy cavalry, the morning sun a blinding sheet of fire on their armor.
On they came at a leisurely walk, helmets and breastplates blazing silvery fire under a perpendicular forest of lances canopied by the white dust.
They were terribly conspicuous; a cloudless sky exposed every detail of their uniforms--the gold epaulets of their officers, the crimson epaulets and breeches of the troopers, the orange-red whalebone plumes that flew like the manes of horses from the trumpeters' helmets.
On they came, riding at ease, accompanied by dust and by a vast and confused volume of assorted noises--the tintinnabulation of their armor, the subdued clash of sabers, the rattle and clash of equipments, the solidly melodious trample of thousands of horses.
But Warner looked down at them with anxious eyes and lips compressed.
"Good God!" he said under his breath to Halkett. "Are they going into battle dressed that way? I thought they had learned something since 1870!"
"War has caught France unprepared in that particular matter," said Halkett gravely.
"I didn't know it. I understood that Detaille had designed their campaign dress. It's a dreadful thing, Halkett, to send men into fire dressed in that way!"
"It is. But look, Warner. Is there anything more magnificent when in mass formation than a brigade of French cuirassiers?"
As they rode clanging under the windows of the inn, officers and troopers looked up curiously at the man in his bathrobe, in friendly surprise at the young man in the British field uniform; but when the upturned, sunburned faces caught sight of the next window beyond, a quick, gay smile flashed out, and dark blue sleeves shot up in laughing greeting and salute.