I wish I could forget what I heard. Many a hundred men have I
seen die in battle, and I have slain more myself than I care to
think of, but all that was fair fight and the duty of a soldier.
It was a very different matter to listen to a murder in this den
of assassins. They were pushing someone along the passage,
someone who resisted and who clung to my door as he passed. They
must have taken him into the third cell, the one which was
farthest from me. "Help! Help!" cried a voice, and then I heard
a blow and a scream. "Help! Help!" cried the voice again, and
then "Gerard! Colonel Gerard!" It was my poor captain of
infantry whom they were slaughtering.

"Murderers! Murderers!" I yelled, and I kicked at my door, but
again I heard him shout and then everything was silent. A minute
later there was a heavy splash, and I knew that no human eye
would ever see Auret again. He had gone as a hundred others had
gone whose names were missing from the roll-calls of their
regiments during that winter in Venice.

The steps returned along the passage, and I thought that they
were coming for me. Instead of that they opened the door of the
cell next to mine and they took someone out of it. I heard the
steps die away up the stair.

At once I renewed my work upon the planks, and within a very few
minutes I had loosened them in such a way that I could remove and
replace them at pleasure. Passing through the aperture I found
myself in the farther cell, which, as I expected, was the other
half of the one in which I had been confined. I was not any
nearer to escape than I had been before, for there was no other