Dennis Wheatley - The Dark Secret of Josephine

"Stop!" shouted Roger. "I represent the law. ‘Twill be jail for any one of you who lays a hand upon me."

Seeing that the men still hesitated, Lucette began to scream abuse at them. "Go on, you cowards! You're four to one! What are you afraid of? Take him to the police and see what I will say of him. I'll prove him a liar! Aye, and a thief! He came here to steal and has a book of mine in his pocket."

Like the proverbial 'last straw' the simple charge of theft seemed to weigh down the balance against Roger in the minds of all three guardsmen. It needed only a final cry from Fouché to spur them forward.

"I take responsibility for this! Seize him! Seize him!"

Roger saw then that his last hope of stalling them off by argument or threats had gone. He was faced with the choice of surrender or action. Surrender would mean the certain loss of the diary—for it was a certainty that Fouché would have it off him and disappear with it—and the probable loss of his life. Action might still give him a chance in a thousand. As they closed in on him he seized the table by its edge and overturned it

The two bottles rolled off and, smashed upon the floor. The candles in them continued to flicker for a moment, casting weird shadows. The meat chopper that Lucette had used to smash away the beam also slid off. It fell upon her foot and she gave an 'ouch' of pain. Roger had been standing with his back to the fire. The sea-coal gave out no flame, only a dull glow; so but for the reddish patch it made and the final guttering of the candles the lofty room was now in darkness.

Roger was sorely tempted to make a dash for the door and the street; but on that side his way was barred by Fouché, Peltier and two of the guardsmen. He knew that he would never be able to force a passage through the four of them. On his other side there were only the thick-set swarthy soldier and Lucette. As the table went over he launched himself at the two of them. The flat of his right hand landed full upon the man's chest, thrusting him violently back. But his left hand missed Lucette, as she had stooped to snatch up the meat chopper during the last flicker of candle.

As the light died Roger was already past them and racing towards the steep flight of stairs. Behind him shouts and curses came from the angry, excited group. Suddenly a cloak of blackness descended, hiding them all from one another, and the stairs from him. But he had judged his distance and direction well; his outstretched hand closed upon the rickety banister rail. Swinging himself round its newel-post he took the stairs three at a time, until he reached the small square landing. Frantically he fumbled for the handle to the door up there, but for thirty seconds he could not find it. Those seconds nearly cost him his life.

From the pounding of his footsteps, all his enemies knew which way he had gone. In a yelling pack, bumping against each other in the darkness as they ran, they headed for the stairs. Lucette, being better acquainted with the geography of the place than the others, reached them first Chopper in hand she sprang up them almost on Roger's heels. He heard the patter of her feet while he was striving to find the handle of the door, but knowing that if he could not get the door open he would be done, he took the risk of continuing to fumble for it. At last his hand closed upon it and, with a swift turn of the wrist he flung the door wide; she reached the landing at that moment, coming full tilt upon him.

The door gave on to a low-ceilinged room with two square, uncur­tained windows. During the past twenty minutes the moon had risen. Its pale light made the two windows silver squares, and enough cold luminance radiated from them to transform the darkness of the landing into a pale greyness. Roger and Lucette could still not make out one another's features, but the silhouette of each was plain to the other. He saw that she had the chopper already raised to cleave his skull. Ducking his head aside as the blow descended, he thrust both his hands out against her body. In the confined space of the little landing they were so close together that the push he gave her had the force of a blow. As a result of it she staggered back. Next second there came the creak of rending wood. The flimsy banister rail gave behind her. With a high-pitched scream she fell backwards, to land with a thump on the floor below.

Having saved himself from her gave Roger only a moment's respite. The swarthy soldier had been next after her up the stairs. As she went through the banisters he was only two steps below the level of the landing; but he was a short man, so the top of his head was as yet no higher than Roger's chest. He made an upward thrust with a pike he was carrying. Roger was just in time to avoid it. Bringing up his right foot he kicked his new attacker under the chin. The man's head snapped back, his eyes started from their sockets. Without a sound he collapsed, and rolled down the stairs, carrying with him the men who were behind.

Groans, curses, shouts again filled the air; but Roger had won for himself a short breathing space. Slipping through the door, he swung it to behind him. To his relief, he found that it had a good strong bolt; but the wood of which the door was made was poor stuff, and he judged that it could not be expected to resist a heavy battering for long. Having shot the bolt he gave one glance round the room and saw that it was empty.

There was not a stick of furniture in it. But that did not concern him. He knew that an arm of the Seine lay at the back of the building. From the window to the river might mean a thirty-foot drop, but he had taken many a worse risk than that in his life, and he was a strong swimmer. Full of new hope that he had as good as saved himself, he ran across the bare boards to one of the windows. Through it could be seen hundreds of twinkling lights in the buildings on the Isle of St. Louis, but as he reached it his pounding heart stopped dead for a second. He could have wept with disappointment. It was barred.

He had barely made this shattering discovery when the sound of heavy blows came from the door. Panting for breath, he ran to the other window. That was barred too. Evidently the room had at one time been used as a prison, or, more probably, a nursery. Pulling up the sash of the window at which he stood, he peered out. Immediately below the water gurgled faintly against the foundations of the building, and the moonlight glinted on the ripples. It was a straight drop if only he could get through the window. The bars were quite thin but strong, as he found on grasping one of them. Exerting all his strength, he endeavoured to wrench it from its sockets. It bent, but all his efforts failed to loosen its ends where they were fixed into the frame of the window. He tried the one above it. That, too, bent, but its ends were equally firmly fixed. Straining on each of them in turn, he tried to bend the centre or the upper one up and the centre of the lower one down until the oval space between them should be wide enough for him to squeeze his head and body through it. But he soon realized that the bars were set too close together for that to be possible.

Meanwhile, blow after blow resounded on the door. The bolt and hinges held, out the upper panels began to splinter. One of the men out mere had found the chopper Lucette had dropped and was hacking at them with it; another was battering at them with a musket butt. Desperately, Roger's eyes roved round the moonlit room seeking for something he could use to prise the end of one of the bars from its socket. Floor, walls, and rafters were bare, but at one side of the room there was a narrow chimney piece and small grate. Running to it he strove to wrench the grate out in the hope that he might smash the bars loose with it. Again he met with disappointment; it was built into the fireplace.