Hyde shook his head as though these remarks were completely unintelligible. But he laughed within himself at the thought that he had already outwitted both Cyprienne and her accomplice, and that, wherever he was, a prisoner or at large, events would work out her discomfiture without him.
He had no fears for himself. They had promised him at the British Embassy that he should be sought out if he did not reappear within three days. Besides, the French police had their eyes on the house. The tables would presently be turned upon his captors in a way that they little expected.
When, therefore, he was led by Ledantec's orders into a little back room dimly lighted by a window looking on to a blank wall, he went like a lamb. But physically he was not particularly comfortable; there were pleasanter ways of spending the day than tied hand and foot to the legs of a bedstead, and Ledantec's farewell speech was calculated to disturb his equanimity.
"Don't make a sound or a move, mind. If you do--" and he produced a glittering knife, with a look that could not be misunderstood.
McKay must have slept for many hours. Daylight was fading, and the den he occupied was nearly dark, when he was aroused by the voices of his Russian fellow-lodgers coming off duty for the night.
They were rough, simple fellows most of them: boorish peasants torn from their village homes, and forced to fight in their Czar's quarrel, which he was pleased to call a holy war. Coarse, uncultivated, but not unkindly, and they gathered around McKay, staring curiously at him, and plying him with questions.
His command of their language soon established amicable relations, and presently, when supper was ready, a nauseous mess of _kasha_, or thick oatmeal porridge, boiled with salt pork, they hospitably invited him to partake. He was a prisoner, but an honoured guest, and they freely pressed their flasks of _vodkhi_ upon him when with great difficulty he had swallowed a few spoonfulls of the black porridge.
They talked, too, incessantly, notwithstanding their fatigue, always on the same subject, this interminable siege.
"It's weary work," said one. "I long for home."
"They will never take the place; Father Todleben will see to that. Why do they not go, and leave us in peace?"