“Oh, wait! You have time enough to be impatient, sir! The mechanism has obviously become rusty, or else the spring isn’t working. … Unless it is something else,” added the Persian anxiously.
“What?”
“He may simply have cut the cord of the counterbalance and blocked the whole apparatus.”
“Why should he? He does not know that we are coming this way!”
“I dare say he suspects it, for he knows that I understand the system.”
“It’s not turning! … And Christine, sir, Christine?”
The Persian said coldly:
“We shall do all that it is humanly possible to do! … But he may stop us at the first step! … He commands the walls, the doors and the trapdoors. In my country, he was known by a name which means the ‘trapdoor lover.’ ”
“But why do these walls obey him alone? He did not build them!”
“Yes, sir, that is just what he did!”
Raoul looked at him in amazement; but the Persian made a sign to him to be silent and pointed to the glass. … There was a sort of shivering reflection. Their image was troubled as in a rippling sheet of water and then all became stationary again.
“You see, sir, that it is not turning! Let us take another road!”
“Tonight, there is no other!” declared the Persian, in a singularly mournful voice. “And now, look out! And be ready to fire.”