"They may say that I have betrayed my trust; that I put friendship before duty. That has always been my error; I have too soft a heart."
Anatole now began to cry with emotion at his own chivalrous self-sacrifice, which changed quickly into bravado as he cried, striking the table noisily--
"Who cares? I would save you from the Prefect himself."
At this moment the big man who had been watching at the window returned, accompanied by two others. He walked straight towards the door of the wine-shop.
"_Sacré bleu! le patron_ (chief). You are lost! Quick! take me by the throat."
Hyde jumped to his feet and promptly obeyed the curious command.
"Now struggle; throw me to the ground, bolt through the back door," whispered Anatole, hastily.
All which Hyde executed promptly and punctiliously. Anatole suffered him to do as he pleased, and Hyde escaped through the back entrance just as the other policemen rushed in at the front.
"After him! Run! Fifty francs to whoever stops him!"
But Hyde had the heels of them. He ran out and through a little courtyard at the back communicating with the street. There he found a _fiacre_, into which he jumped, shouting to the cabman--
"Drive on straight ahead! A napoleon for yourself."
In this way he distanced his pursuers, and half-an-hour later regained his hotel by a long detour.
Rather agitated and exhausted by the events of the morning, Hyde went upstairs to his own room to rest and review his situation.
"It is quite evident," he said to himself, "that Cyprienne has tried to turn the tables on me. I was too open with her. It was incautious of me to show my hand so soon. Of course the police have been set upon me--the accused and still unjudged perpetrator of the crime in Tinplate Street--by her. But has she acted alone in this?
"I doubt it. I doubt whether she would have come to Paris with that express purpose, or whether the police would have listened to her if she had.
"But who assisted her? Some one from whom she has no secrets. Were it not that such a woman is likely to have set up the closest relations with other miscreants in these past years, I should say that her agent and accomplice was Ledantec. Ledantec is still alive; I know that, for I saw him myself on the field of the Alma, rifling the dead.