A woman's shrill scream went through him like a dagger. She screamed again and again in desperate fear; then he heard her running along the corridor and down the stairs, still screaming as she went. The landlord's daughter?
He leapt out of bed and grabbed Stafford's spatula, the stick of wax and the remaining bundle of picklocks. Where could he hide them? The screaming had stopped but he could hear thumping below, as though men were coming up the stairs. Stafford had not come back and it was difficult to know what had happened.
Hurriedly he tossed the picklocks, wax and spatula up on top of the canopy over the bed, then dragged off his clothes and pulled on his nightshirt, blew out the candle and hurried to the door, waiting a few seconds before opening it as the: first of the men ran past.
It was the lieutenant with a lantern, followed by Louis and then the landlord.
'What's happening?' Ramage asked sleepily and with suitable nervousness.
'Burglars!' the landlord said, using Raimage's appearance to leave the other two men to run into the lieutenant's room. 'My daughter found them and raised the alarm!'
'What was she doing up here?'
'She had written a billet doux for the lieutenant and crept up to put it under his pillow, I think. Then she saw all these men. Half a dozen or more, she says ...'
Ramage murmured sympathetic noises as he listened. A few moments later the lieutenant strode out, chest puffed with importance. 'There is no one there - and the dispatches are safe -' he waved the satchel he was holding. 'The window is wide open - the villains escaped. Landlord! Fetch the gendarmes - we must start a search for them. Six men!'
The landlord scurried down the stairs.
'Did you see anything, M'sieur?' the lieutenant asked Ramage.
'Nothing - I heard screaming. It woke me up.?
Louis said, 'M'sieur still looks half asleep, for all that!'
Ramage took the hint. He rubbed his eyes. 'I am, too. Did they get away with anything valuable?'
'Nothing that I can see,' the lieutenant said complacently. He held up the satchel. ‘This is all that matters. That is still firmly locked, as you can see -' he tugged at the flap. 'The only keys that will open it are in Boulogne and in Paris. The Admiral's dispatches to the Minister of Marine.'
'Do you think the burglars were after that?' Louis asked innocently.
The lieutenant shook his head vigorously. 'Not a chance. Who could know that I carry dispatches? And anyway, the satchel is always concealed. I rely on your discretion, gentlemen,' he said confidentially.
'Just common thieves,' Louis said. ‘They probably looked through the window and saw we were playing cards. Why,' he exclaimed, 'they'd have seen me, too! Here, lend me your lantern, I must see if I've been robbed!'
Louis fiddled with the key for a few moments - Ramage remembered he had left the door unlocked and obviously wanted to conceal the fact from the lieutenant - swung the door open and went inside.
'Everything is all right,' he said when he emerged. 'They must have decided to search your room first. They recognized you as a man of substance,' he added slyly.
'You are winning at cards,' the lieutenant grumbled. 'Second time running. A month's pay you've taken off me so far -'
He broke off. Strange voices were coming up the stairs and Ramage saw two gendarmes, each with a lantern. They clumped along the corridor and stopped.
'Which of you is the Italian, di Stefano?'
Ramage stepped forward, puzzled.
'Get dressed,' one of the gendarmes snapped, 'you are under arrest,'
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
The police headquarters were on the south side of the square, looking out across the pavé to the guillotine under the plane trees on the far side. The two gendarmes pushed Ramage through the open door with a series of oaths and one of them kept him covered with a pistol while the other went along a corridor and knocked on a door. A minute or two later he called and the man with the pistol gestured to Ramage to follow.
Sitting at the desk in the middle of the room was a man in an officer's uniform whose thin face was heavily lined. Every few moments his right eye suddenly closed momentarily, as though he was winking, followed by a spasmodic jerk of his right shoulder. For a moment Ramage was reminded of a puppet, some of whose strings were broken.
The man pulled his lips back, as though about to bite something juicy, and exposing a mouthful of yellowed teeth. 'Passport,' he hissed.
Ramage dug into his coat pocket and then handed it over.
'Gianfranco di Stefano, eh? You speak French? You are Italian?'
Ramage nodded.
'What are you doing in Amiens?'
'Travelling to Paris. I was taken ill.’
One of the gendarmes whispered to the officer.
'Paris? You were travelling to Boulogne. You have a carriage ordered for tomorrow. You and two other men.'
T have been to Boulogne and was going back to Paris when I was taken ill,' Ramage explained with a nervousness far from feigned. 'Before I recovered, word came from Boulogne that there was still some unfinished business there and asking me to return.'
'What business? Who asked you?'
Ramage guessed that he was trapped if this man was thorough. He could bluff it out for a few days, but the moment the police checked with the Port Captain in Boulogne, they would find out that there was no such person as Signor di Stefano; that his documents were genuine but the blank spaces had been filled in with a false name. And then the fun would start: they would set to work on him to find out what it was all about. 'Set to work' —he was avoiding using the word 'torture,' but that was what he meant.
‘I have nothing to say,' Ramage said crossly. 'Why am I under arrest?'
He had to keep his mouth shut for long enough for Louis to get the dispatch to Boulogne, and be sure the Marie had sailed for the rendezvous. Once he could be sure that the dispatches were in Lord Nelson's hands, his job was done. Then he could talk as freely as he wanted - making sure not to incriminate Louis and his comrades - or remain silent. The final result was likely to be the same: he would swing over on the bascule and the executioner would let the blade drop. Le Moniteur would probably print some florid announcement that an English spy had been executed at Amiens (or an Italian one, if he stayed silent), and eventually someone in the Admiralty in London might connect the execution with the fact that Lieutenant Ramage had disappeared after sending a final report from Amiens ...
'You have nothing to say, eh? Well, I have,' the officer said. 'You are under arrest because your man - your foreman, I believe? - was seen by the daughter of the landlord in the room of another guest. An officer of the Republic,' he added ominously.
'I thought she said she saw several men.' It was a glimmer of hope but no more.
'She may have done; what concerns you is that your foreman is the one she definitely recognized.'
Ramage shrugged his shoulders. ‘That's what she says. I was asleep and have no idea what was going on. Was she in the room with my foreman? Did they have an assignation?'
It was a weak enough answer, but for the moment he was trying to gain time to think. Where the devil was Stafford now - obviously he had escaped out of the window, but how long could he avoid recapture? He did not speak a word of French, had no money and no map to help him get back to Boulogne. The only thing on his side was a natural Cockney shrewdness.
'What was your foreman doing?'
'Seducing her, perhaps? How should I know - I told you, I was asleep.'
Where was Louis now? Had he escaped before anyone checked up on his story that he was acting as the spy-cum-guard to the Italian travellers? Ramage could not remember seeing him from the moment the gendarmes said, 'Get dressed ...' On the other hand he might still be at the hotel, pretending to be as puzzled over Stafford's behaviour as the gendarmes. That would make sense! At the moment the only thing the gendarmes knew was that Stafford had been seen in the lieutenant's room. Nothing had been stolen so there was nothing to incriminate either Signor di Stefano or Louis. If Louis suddenly vanished it would be taken as proof of complicity.