[IC} Monkeys, violins, and violence

What luck ...

... the room inside the window is a custodial closet, and the door to the interior is ajar. The morning light through the window shows a mop, a broom, a bucket, a long-handled dustpan, a large tool chest, a small toolbox, and, yes, a bundle of rope. The crack of the door reveals that the interior passage is lit dimly by sunlight through the other windows and rooms on this side of the building.

Jean thinks that the broom and mop, with the rope knotted round them, are braced securely across the narrow window.

Jean's piratical background serves her welland her makeshift rope ladder holds up as Marcel and Pierre ascend quietly into the janitorial closet.

The door swings open a bit as Jean handles the knob. Through the narrow opening she can see a vacant hallway, marble-floored, the walls of marble also. The fancy new electric chandeliers are not presently lit, the morning sunlight through the tall windows suffices. It was an oddity that the janitorial closet window was open ...

Marcel leads the way into the grand foyer, from which he knows there is a small entrance to the understage area where the practice instruments are kept - of course the prima virtuossi keep their personal pieces at home, unless performing for an audience.

Abruptly, your progress through the vast, ornate, and dimly-lit interior is halted by a shout: "Hey! You intruders! What do you think you are doing, eh?" A beefy fellow in the livery of the Paris gendarmes stomps toward you from the front of the building. He holds a large baton of dark wood, not as a conductor of music but rather as a conducer of headaches. "You should not be in here ... eh, Richelieus?!" He spits on the polished floor, rubs out the smear with his heavy boot. "Get out!"

"Aha! Would you draw steel on me, dog? I'll shatter your puny blade with one stroke of my good walnut wand, sirrah!" The gendarme stamps menacingly toward Marcel.

The gendarme steps to the side, moving so that a line is formed of him - Marcel - Pierre. Around his neck on a lanyard he wears a brass whistle; this he raises to his lips and blows. The shrill note shrieks off the marble walls and vaulted ceiling, its sound glimmers from the crystals that dangle from the (unlit) electric chandeliers. "The others come presently!" he triumphantly announces. "We have juridiction here, you dogs! We'll break your heads and have you arraigned."

You hear several hefty people approaching at a running pace, and looking toward the sounds of heavy boots you see two more gendarmes each gripping a sturdy baton. One wears a pistol at her hip, hanging in a holster from a belt that holds about a dozen cartridges.

"Deesist!" exclaims the gunbearer. "Put up your swords. We have no quarrel with the Richelieus!"