but when shinny came in ... geoffrey had been sitting by ian , who was remembering in a broken , scarcely coherent way how he and ian had rescued misery from the palace dungeons of the mad french viscount leroux , how they had escaped in a wagonload of hay , and how misery distracted one of the viscounts guards at a critics moment by slipping one gorgeously unclad leg out of the hay and waving it delicately .