Andurillo dressed with a rapidity whereof his valet de chambre would not have been capable, during the few months of fachonnâble life he had led in Annuminas. He then took a second look out the window, and perceived a second feathered cap at the foot of the staircase of the hotel, while a third, on horseback and carrying a blunderbuss, kept watch at the great gate that was the only exit from the hotel's property.
"I am lost," he thought. Indeed, for a being in Andurillo's position, capture meant trial, judgement, and death without mercy and without delay; nor would plea-bargain avail against the wrath of the Prosecutorrim; then he smiled a pale smile, as a thought of hope spurted within his dubious-specied head.
He carefully left his door half ajar, as if he had left the room without remembering to shut it, and clamb up the chimney, hoping to be taken for Père Noël who had gotten lost on the way back to Narnie, or better yet for the Grinche, for then people would think him a miserly cad and leave him in peace.
At this moment, the shirrifes redoubled their attention. Discovered, he was doomed, as Morgot at the end of the War of Wrath, when he offered to dance a minuet for the Valards if they would him go free, and they laughed sarcastically: a chase over the rooftop left him no possibility of success, and he could not fly. He sought the only chimney from which no smoke exited, slithered towards it, and disappeared through its orifice without having been seen.
