"Come on, guv'ner, come on, all of you!" he broke out as he came abreast of them. "She's there--they're all there--kickin' up Meg's diversions, sir, and singin' and dancin' like mad. And, sir, he's there, too--the pedler chap! I see him come up and sneak in with the rest. Come on! This way, all of you." If they had merely run before, they all but flew now; for this second assurance that Margot, the great and long-sought-for Margot, was actually within their reach served to spur every man to outdo himself; so that it was but a minute or two later when they came in sight of the inn and bore down upon it in a solid phalanx. And then--just then--when another minute would have settled everything--the demon of mischance chose to play them a scurvy trick. All they knew of it was that an Apache coming out of the building for some purpose of his own looked up and saw them, then faced round and bent back in the doorway; that of a sudden a very tornado of music and laughter and singing and dancing rolled out into the night, and that when they came pounding up to the doorway, the fellow was lounging there serenely smoking; and, inside, his colleagues were holding a revel wild enough to wake the dead. In the winking of an eye he was carried off his feet and swept on by this sudden inrush of the law; the door clashed open, the little slatted barrier beyond was knocked aside, and the police were pouring into the room and running headlong into a spinning mass of wild dancers. The band ceased suddenly as they appeared, the dancers cried out as if in a panic of alarm, and at Ducroix's commanding "Surrender in the name of the Law!" a fat woman behind the bar flung up her arms and voiced a despairing shriek. "Soul of misfortune! for what, m'sieur--for what?" she cried. "It is no sin to laugh and dance. We break no law, my customers and I. What is it you want that you come in upon us like this?" Ah, what indeed? Not anything that could be seen. A glance round the room showed nothing and no one but these suddenly disturbed dancers, and of Margot and the Mauravanian never a sign. "M'sieur!" began Ducroix, turning to Narkom, whose despair was only too evident, and who, in company with Dollops, was rushing about the place pushing people here and there, looking behind them, looking in all the corners, and generally deporting themselves after the manner of a couple of hounds endeavouring to pick up a lost scent. "M'sieur, shall it be an error, then?" Narkom did not answer. Of a sudden, however, he remembered what had been said of the trap and, pushing aside a group of girls standing over it, found it in the middle of the floor. "Here it is--this is the way she got out!" he shouted. "Bolted, by James! bolted on the under side! Up with it, up with it--the Jezebel got out this way." But though Ducroix and Dollops aided him, and they pulled and tugged and tugged and pulled, they could not budge it one inch.