Chauvelin no longer made any pretence to hold Armand by the arm. By temperament as well as by profession a spy, there was one subject at least which he had mastered thoroughly: that was the study of human nature. Though occasionally an exceptionally complex mental organisation baffled him—as in the case of Sir Percy Blakeney—he prided himself, and justly, too, on reading natures like that of Armand St. Just as he would an open book.
The excitable disposition of the Latin races he knew out and out; he knew exactly how far a sentimental situation would lead a young Frenchman like Armand, who was by disposition chivalrous, and by temperament essentially passionate. Above all things, he knew when and how far he could trust a man to do either a sublime action or an essentially foolish one.
Therefore he walked along contentedly now, not even looking back to see whether St. Just was following him. He knew that he did.
His thoughts only dwelt on the young enthusiast—in his mind he called him the young fool—in order to weigh in the balance the mighty possibilities that would accrue from the present sequence of events. The fixed idea ever working in the man’s scheming brain had already transformed a vague belief into a certainty. That the Scarlet Pimpernel was in Paris at the present moment Chauvelin had now become convinced. How far he could turn the capture of Armand St. Just to the triumph of his own ends remained to be seen.
But this he did know: the Scarlet Pimpernel—the man whom he had learned to know, to dread, and even in a grudging manner to admire—was not like to leave one of his followers in the lurch. Marguerite’s brother in the Temple would be the surest decoy for the elusive meddler who still, and in spite of all care and precaution, continued to baffle the army of spies set upon his track.
Chauvelin could hear Armand’s light, elastic footsteps resounding behind him on the flagstones. A world of intoxicating possibilities surged up before him. Ambition, which two successive dire failures had atrophied in his breast, once more rose up buoyant and hopeful. Once he had sworn to lay the Scarlet Pimpernel by the heels, and that oath was not yet wholly forgotten; it had lain dormant after the catastrophe of Boulogne, but with the sight of Armand St. Just it had re-awakened and confronted him again with the strength of a likely fulfilment.
The courtyard looked gloomy and deserted. The thin drizzle which still fell from a persistently leaden sky effectually held every outline of masonry, of column, or of gate hidden as beneath a shroud. The corridor which skirted it all round was ill-lighted save by an occasional oil-lamp fixed in the wall.
But Chauvelin knew his way well. Heron’s lodgings gave on the second courtyard, the Square du Nazaret, and the way thither led past the main square tower, in the top floor of which the uncrowned King of France eked out his miserable existence as the plaything of a rough cobbler and his wife.
Just beneath its frowning bastions Chauvelin turned back towards Armand. He pointed with a careless hand up-wards to the central tower.
“We have got little Capet in there,” he said dryly. “Your chivalrous Scarlet Pimpernel has not ventured in these precincts yet, you see.”
Armand was silent. He had no difficulty in looking unconcerned; his thoughts were so full of Jeanne that he cared but little at this moment for any Bourbon king or for the destinies of France.
Now the two men reached the postern gate. A couple of sentinels were standing by, but the gate itself was open, and from within there came the sound of bustle and of noise, of a good deal of swearing, and also of loud laughter.
The guard-room gave on the left of the gate, and the laughter came from there. It was brilliantly lighted, and Armand, peering in, in the wake of Chauvelin, could see groups of soldiers sitting and standing about. There was a table in the centre of the room, and on it a number of jugs and pewter mugs, packets of cards, and overturned boxes of dice.
But the bustle did not come from the guard-room; it came from the landing and the stone stairs beyond.
Chauvelin, apparently curious, had passed through the gate, and Armand followed him. The light from the open door of the guard-room cut sharply across the landing, making the gloom beyond appear more dense and almost solid. From out the darkness, fitfully intersected by a lanthorn apparently carried to and fro, moving figures loomed out ghost-like and weirdly gigantic. Soon Armand distinguished a number of large objects that encumbered the landing, and as he and Chauvelin left the sharp light of the guard-room behind them, he could see that the large objects were pieces of furniture of every shape and size; a wooden bedstead—dismantled—leaned against the wall, a black horsehair sofa blocked the way to the tower stairs, and there were numberless chairs and several tables piled one on the top of the other.
In the midst of this litter a stout, flabby-cheeked man stood, apparently giving directions as to its removal to persons at present unseen.
“Hola, Papa Simon!” exclaimed Chauvelin jovially; “moving out to-day? What?”
“Yes, thank the Lord!—if there be a Lord!” retorted the other curtly. “Is that you, citizen Chauvelin?”
“In person, citizen. I did not know you were leaving quite so soon. Is citizen Heron anywhere about?”
“Just left,” replied Simon. “He had a last look at Capet just before my wife locked the brat up in the inner room. Now he’s gone back to his lodgings.”
A man carrying a chest, empty of its drawers, on his back now came stumbling down the tower staircase. Madame Simon followed close on his heels, steadying the chest with one hand.
“We had better begin to load up the cart,” she called to her husband in a high-pitched querulous voice; “the corridor is getting too much encumbered.”
She looked suspiciously at Chauvelin and at Armand, and when she encountered the former’s bland, unconcerned gaze she suddenly shivered and drew her black shawl closer round her shoulders.
“Bah!” she said, “I shall be glad to get out of this God-forsaken hole. I hate the very sight of these walls.”
“Indeed, the citizeness does not look over robust in health,” said Chauvelin with studied politeness. “The stay in the tower did not, mayhap, bring forth all the fruits of prosperity which she had anticipated.”
The woman eyed him with dark suspicion lurking in her hollow eyes.
“I don’t know what you mean, citizen,” she said with a shrug of her wide shoulders.
“Oh! I meant nothing,” rejoined Chauvelin, smiling. “I am so interested in your removal; busy man as I am, it has amused me to watch you. Whom have you got to help you with the furniture?”
“Dupont, the man-of-all-work, from the concierge,” said Simon curtly. “Citizen Heron would not allow any one to come in from the outside.”
“Rightly too. Have the new commissaries come yet?
“Only citizen Cochefer. He is waiting upstairs for the others.”
“And Capet?”
“He is all safe. Citizen Heron came to see him, and then he told me to lock the little vermin up in the inner room. Citizen Cochefer had just arrived by that time, and he has remained in charge.”
During all this while the man with the chest on his back was waiting for orders. Bent nearly double, he was grumbling audibly at his uncomfortable position.
“Does the citizen want to break my back?” he muttered.
“We had best get along—quoi?”
He asked if he should begin to carry the furniture out into the street.
“Two sous have I got to pay every ten minutes to the lad who holds my nag,” he said, muttering under his breath; “we shall be all night at this rate.”
“Begin to load then,” commanded Simon gruffly. “Here!—begin with this sofa.”
“You’ll have to give me a hand with that,” said the man. “Wait a bit; I’ll just see that everything is all right in the cart. I’ll be back directly.”
“Take something with you then as you are going down,” said Madame Simon in her querulous voice.
The man picked up a basket of linen that stood in the angle by the door. He hoisted it on his back and shuffled away with it across the landing and out through the gate.
“How did Capet like parting from his papa and maman?” asked Chauvelin with a laugh.
“H’m!” growled Simon laconically. “He will find out soon enough how well off he was under our care.”
“Have the other commissaries come yet?”
“No. But they will be here directly. Citizen Cochefer is upstairs mounting guard over Capet.”
“Well, good-bye, Papa Simon,” concluded Chauvelin jovially. “Citizeness, your servant!”
He bowed with unconcealed irony to the cobbler’s wife, and nodded to Simon, who expressed by a volley of motley oaths his exact feelings with regard to all the agents of the Committee of General Security.
“Six months of this penal servitude have we had,” he said roughly, “and no thanks or pension. I would as soon serve a ci-devant aristo as your accursed Committee.”
The man Dupont had returned. Stolidly, after the fashion of his kind, he commenced the removal of citizen Simon’s goods. He seemed a clumsy enough creature, and Simon and his wife had to do most of the work themselves.
Chauvelin watched the moving forms for a while, then he shrugged his shoulders with a laugh of indifference, and turned on his heel.
Heron was not at his lodgings when, at last, after vigorous pulls at the bell, a great deal of waiting and much cursing, Chauvelin, closely followed by Armand, was introduced in the chief agent’s office.
The soldier who acted as servant said that citizen Heron had gone out to sup, but would surely be home again by eight o’clock. Armand by this time was so dazed with fatigue that he sank on a chair like a log, and remained there staring into the fire, unconscious of the flight of time.
Anon Heron came home. He nodded to Chauvelin, and threw but a cursory glance on Armand.
“Five minutes, citizen,” he said, with a rough attempt at an apology. “I am sorry to keep you waiting, but the new commissaries have arrived who are to take charge of Capet. The Simons have just gone, and I want to assure myself that everything is all right in the Tower. Cochefer has been in charge, but I like to cast an eye over the brat every day myself.”
He went out again, slamming the door behind him. His heavy footsteps were heard treading the flagstones of the corridor, and gradually dying away in the distance. Armand had paid no heed either to his entrance or to his exit. He was only conscious of an intense weariness, and would at this moment gladly have laid his head on the scaffold if on it he could find rest.
A white-faced clock on the wall ticked off the seconds one by one. From the street below came the muffled sounds of wheeled traffic on the soft mud of the road; it was raining more heavily now, and from time to time a gust of wind rattled the small windows in their dilapidated frames, or hurled a shower of heavy drops against the panes.
The heat from the stove had made Armand drowsy; his head fell forward on his chest. Chauvelin, with his hands held behind his back, paced ceaselessly up and down the narrow room.
Suddenly Armand started—wide awake now. Hurried footsteps on the flagstones outside, a hoarse shout, a banging of heavy doors, and the next moment Heron stood once more on the threshold of the room. Armand, with wide-opened eyes, gazed on him in wonder. The whole appearance of the man had changed. He looked ten years older, with lank, dishevelled hair hanging matted over a moist forehead, the cheeks ashen-white, the full lips bloodless and hanging, flabby and parted, displaying both rows of yellow teeth that shook against each other. The whole figure looked bowed, as if shrunk within itself.
Chauvelin had paused in his restless walk. He gazed on his colleague, a frown of puzzlement on his pale, set face.
“Capet!” he exclaimed, as soon as he had taken in every detail of Heron’s altered appearance, and seen the look of wild terror that literally distorted his face.
Heron could not speak; his teeth were chattering in his mouth, and his tongue seemed paralysed. Chauvelin went up to him. He was several inches shorter than his colleague, but at this moment he seemed to be towering over him like an avenging spirit. He placed a firm hand on the other’s bowed shoulders.
“Capet has gone—is that it?” he queried peremptorily.
The look of terror increased in Heron’s eyes, giving its mute reply.
“How? When?”
But for the moment the man was speechless. An almost maniacal fear seemed to hold him in its grip. With an impatient oath Chauvelin turned away from him.
“Brandy!” he said curtly, speaking to Armand.
A bottle and glass were found in the cupboard. It was St. Just who poured out the brandy and held it to Heron’s lips. Chauvelin was once more pacing up and down the room in angry impatience.
“Pull yourself together, man,” he said roughly after a while, “and try and tell me what has occurred.”
Heron had sunk into a chair. He passed a trembling hand once or twice over his forehead.
“Capet has disappeared,” he murmured; “he must have been spirited away while the Simons were moving their furniture. That accursed Cochefer was completely taken in.”
Heron spoke in a toneless voice, hardly above a whisper, and like one whose throat is dry and mouth parched. But the brandy had revived him somewhat, and his eyes lost their former glassy look.
“How?” asked Chauvelin curtly.
“I was just leaving the Tower when he arrived. I spoke to him at the door. I had seen Capet safely installed in the room, and gave orders to the woman Simon to let citizen Cochefer have a look at him, too, and then to lock up the brat in the inner room and install Cochefer in the antechamber on guard. I stood talking to Cochefer for a few moments in the antechamber. The woman Simon and the man-of-all-work, Dupont—whom I know well—were busy with the furniture. There could not have been any one else concealed about the place—that I’ll swear. Cochefer, after he took leave of me, went straight into the room; he found the woman Simon in the act of turning the key in the door of the inner chamber. I have locked Capet in there,’ she said, giving the key to Cochefer; ‘he will be quite safe until to-night; when the other commissaries come.’”
“Didn’t Cochefer go into the room and ascertain whether the woman was lying?”
“Yes, he did! He made the woman re-open the door and peeped in over her shoulder. She said the child was asleep. He vows that he saw the child lying fully dressed on a rug in the further corner of the room. The room, of course, was quite empty of furniture and only lighted by one candle, but there was the rug and the child asleep on it. Cochefer swears he saw him, and now—when I went up—”
“Well?”
“The commissaries were all there—Cochefer and Lasniere, Lorinet and Legrand. We went into the inner room, and I had a candle in my hand. We saw the child lying on the rug, just as Cochefer had seen him, and for a while we took no notice of it. Then some one—I think it was Lorinet—went to have a closer look at the brat. He took up the candle and went up to the rug. Then he gave a cry, and we all gathered round him. The sleeping child was only a bundle of hair and of clothes, a dummy—what?”
There was silence now in the narrow room, while the white-faced clock continued to tick off each succeeding second of time. Heron had once more buried his head in his hands; a trembling—like an attack of ague—shook his wide, bony shoulders. Armand had listened to the narrative with glowing eyes and a beating heart. The details which the two Terrorists here could not probably understand he had already added to the picture which his mind had conjured up.
He was back in thought now in the small lodging in the rear of St. Germain l’Auxerrois; Sir Andrew Ffoulkes was there, and my Lord Tony and Hastings, and a man was striding up and down the room, looking out into the great space beyond the river with the eyes of a seer, and a firm voice said abruptly:
“It is about the Dauphin!”
“Have you any suspicions?” asked Chauvelin now, pausing in his walk beside Heron, and once more placing a firm, peremptory hand on his colleague’s shoulder.
“Suspicions!” exclaimed the chief agent with a loud oath. “Suspicions! Certainties, you mean. The man sat here but two days ago, in that very chair, and bragged of what he would do. I told him then that if he interfered with Capet I would wring his neck with my own hands.”
And his long, talon-like fingers, with their sharp, grimy nails, closed and unclosed like those of feline creatures when they hold the coveted prey.
“Of whom do you speak?” queried Chauvelin curtly.
“Of whom? Of whom but that accursed de Batz? His pockets are bulging with Austrian money, with which, no doubt, he has bribed the Simons and Cochefer and the sentinels—”
“And Lorinet and Lasniere and you,” interposed Chauvelin dryly.
“It is false!” roared Heron, who already at the suggestion was foaming at the mouth, and had jumped up from his chair, standing at bay as if prepared to fight for his life.
“False, is it?” retorted Chauvelin calmly; “then be not so quick, friend Heron, in slashing out with senseless denunciations right and left. You’ll gain nothing by denouncing any one just now. This is too intricate a matter to be dealt with a sledge-hammer. Is any one up in the Tower at this moment?” he asked in quiet, business-like tones.
“Yes. Cochefer and the others are still there. They are making wild schemes to cover their treachery. Cochefer is aware of his own danger, and Lasniere and the others know that they arrived at the Tower several hours too late. They are all at fault, and they know it. As for that de Batz,” he continued with a voice rendered raucous with bitter passion, “I swore to him two days ago that he should not escape me if he meddled with Capet. I’m on his track already. I’ll have him before the hour of midnight, and I’ll torture him—yes! I’ll torture him—the Tribunal shall give me leave. We have a dark cell down below here where my men know how to apply tortures worse than the rack—where they know just how to prolong life long enough to make it unendurable. I’ll torture him! I’ll torture him!”
But Chauvelin abruptly silenced the wretch with a curt command; then, without another word, he walked straight out of the room.
In thought Armand followed him. The wild desire was suddenly born in him to run away at this moment, while Heron, wrapped in his own meditations, was paying no heed to him. Chauvelin’s footsteps had long ago died away in the distance; it was a long way to the upper floor of the Tower, and some time would be spent, too, in interrogating the commissaries. This was Armand’s opportunity. After all, if he were free himself he might more effectually help to rescue Jeanne. He knew, too, now where to join his leader. The corner of the street by the canal, where Sir Andrew Ffoulkes would be waiting with the coal-cart; then there was the spinney on the road to St. Germain. Armand hoped that, with good luck, he might yet overtake his comrades, tell them of Jeanne’s plight, and entreat them to work for her rescue.
He had forgotten that now he had no certificate of safety, that undoubtedly he would be stopped at the gates at this hour of the night; that his conduct proving suspect he would in all probability he detained, and, mayhap, be brought back to this self-same place within an hour. He had forgotten all that, for the primeval instinct for freedom had suddenly been aroused. He rose softly from his chair and crossed the room. Heron paid no attention to him. Now he had traversed the antechamber and unlatched the outer door.
Immediately a couple of bayonets were crossed in front of him, two more further on ahead scintillated feebly in the flickering light. Chauvelin had taken his precautions. There was no doubt that Armand St. Just was effectually a prisoner now.
With a sigh of disappointment he went back to his place beside the fire. Heron had not even moved whilst he had made this futile attempt at escape. Five minutes later Chauvelin re-entered the room.
“You can leave de Batz and his gang alone, citizen Heron,” said Chauvelin, as soon as he had closed the door behind him; “he had nothing to do with the escape of the Dauphin.”
Heron growled out a few words of incredulity. But Chauvelin shrugged his shoulders and looked with unutterable contempt on his colleague. Armand, who was watching him closely, saw that in his hand he held a small piece of paper, which he had crushed into a shapeless mass.
“Do not waste your time, citizen,” he said, “in raging against an empty wind-bag. Arrest de Batz if you like, or leave him alone an you please—we have nothing to fear from that braggart.”
With nervous, slightly shaking fingers he set to work to smooth out the scrap of paper which he held. His hot hands had soiled it and pounded it until it was a mere rag and the writing on it illegible. But, such as it was, he threw it down with a blasphemous oath on the desk in front of Heron’s eyes.
“It is that accursed Englishman who has been at work again,” he said more calmly; “I guessed it the moment I heard your story. Set your whole army of sleuth-hounds on his track, citizen; you’ll need them all.”
Heron picked up the scrap of torn paper and tried to decipher the writing on it by the light from the lamp. He seemed almost dazed now with the awful catastrophe that had befallen him, and the fear that his own wretched life would have to pay the penalty for the disappearance of the child.
As for Armand—even in the midst of his own troubles, and of his own anxiety for Jeanne, he felt a proud exultation in his heart. The Scarlet Pimpernel had succeeded; Percy had not failed in his self-imposed undertaking. Chauvelin, whose piercing eyes were fixed on him at that moment, smiled with contemptuous irony.
“As you will find your hands overfull for the next few hours, citizen Heron,” he said, speaking to his colleague and nodding in the direction of Armand, “I’ll not trouble you with the voluntary confession this young citizen desired to make to you. All I need tell you is that he is an adherent of the Scarlet Pimpernel—I believe one of his most faithful, most trusted officers.”
Heron roused himself from the maze of gloomy thoughts that were again paralysing his tongue. He turned bleary, wild eyes on Armand.
“We have got one of them, then?” he murmured incoherently, babbling like a drunken man.
“M’yes!” replied Chauvelin lightly; “but it is too late now for a formal denunciation and arrest. He cannot leave Paris anyhow, and all that your men need to do is to keep a close look-out on him. But I should send him home to-night if I were you.”
Heron muttered something more, which, however, Armand did not understand. Chauvelin’s words were still ringing in his ear. Was he, then, to be set free to-night? Free in a measure, of course, since spies were to be set to watch him—but free, nevertheless? He could not understand Chauvelin’s attitude, and his own self-love was not a little wounded at the thought that he was of such little account that these men could afford to give him even this provisional freedom. And, of course, there was still Jeanne.
“I must, therefore, bid you good-night, citizen,” Chauvelin was saying in his bland, gently ironical manner. “You will be glad to return to your lodgings. As you see, the chief agent of the Committee of General Security is too much occupied just now to accept the sacrifice of your life which you were prepared so generously to offer him.”
“I do not understand you, citizen,” retorted Armand coldly, “nor do I desire indulgence at your hands. You have arrested an innocent woman on the trumped-up charge that she was harbouring me. I came here to-night to give myself up to justice so that she might be set free.”
“But the hour is somewhat late, citizen,” rejoined Chauvelin urbanely. “The lady in whom you take so fervent an interest is no doubt asleep in her cell at this hour. It would not be fitting to disturb her now. She might not find shelter before morning, and the weather is quite exceptionally unpropitious.”
“Then, sir,” said Armand, a little bewildered, “am I to understand that if I hold myself at your disposition Mademoiselle Lange will be set free as early to-morrow morning as may be?”
“No doubt, sir—no doubt,” replied Chauvelin with more than his accustomed blandness; “if you will hold yourself entirely at our disposition, Mademoiselle Lange will be set free to-morrow. I think that we can safely promise that, citizen Heron, can we not?” he added, turning to his colleague.
But Heron, overcome with the stress of emotions, could only murmur vague, unintelligible words.
“Your word on that, citizen Chauvelin?” asked Armand.
“My word on it an you will accept it.”
“No, I will not do that. Give me an unconditional certificate of safety and I will believe you.”
“Of what use were that to you?” asked Chauvelin.
“I believe my capture to be of more importance to you than that of Mademoiselle Lange,” said Armand quietly.
“I will use the certificate of safety for myself or one of my friends if you break your word to me anent Mademoiselle Lange.”
“H’m! the reasoning is not illogical, citizen,” said Chauvelin, whilst a curious smile played round the corners of his thin lips. “You are quite right. You are a more valuable asset to us than the charming lady who, I hope, will for many a day and year to come delight pleasure-loving Paris with her talent and her grace.”
“Amen to that, citizen,” said Armand fervently.
“Well, it will all depend on you, sir! Here,” he added, coolly running over some papers on Heron’s desk until he found what he wanted, “is an absolutely unconditional certificate of safety. The Committee of General Security issue very few of these. It is worth the cost of a human life. At no barrier or gate of any city can such a certificate be disregarded, nor even can it be detained. Allow me to hand it to you, citizen, as a pledge of my own good faith.”
Smiling, urbane, with a curious look that almost expressed amusement lurking in his shrewd, pale eyes, Chauvelin handed the momentous document to Armand.
The young man studied it very carefully before he slipped it into the inner pocket of his coat.
“How soon shall I have news of Mademoiselle Lange?” he asked finally.
“In the course of to-morrow. I myself will call on you and redeem that precious document in person. You, on the other hand, will hold yourself at my disposition. That’s understood, is it not?”
“I shall not fail you. My lodgings are—”
“Oh! do not trouble,” interposed Chauvelin, with a polite bow; “we can find that out for ourselves.”
Heron had taken no part in this colloquy. Now that Armand prepared to go he made no attempt to detain him, or to question his colleague’s actions. He sat by the table like a log; his mind was obviously a blank to all else save to his own terrors engendered by the events of this night.
With bleary, half-veiled eyes he followed Armand’s progress through the room, and seemed unaware of the loud slamming of the outside door. Chauvelin had escorted the young man past the first line of sentry, then he took cordial leave of him.
“Your certificate will, you will find, open every gate to you. Good-night, citizen. A demain.”
“Good-night.”
Armand’s slim figure disappeared in the gloom. Chauvelin watched him for a few moments until even his footsteps had died away in the distance; then he turned back towards Heron’s lodgings.
“A nous deux,” he muttered between tightly clenched teeth; “a nous deux once more, my enigmatical Scarlet Pimpernel.”
It was an exceptionally dark night, and the rain was falling in torrents. Sir Andrew Ffoulkes, wrapped in a piece of sacking, had taken shelter right underneath the coal-cart; even then he was getting wet through to the skin.
He had worked hard for two days coal-heaving, and the night before he had found a cheap, squalid lodging where at any rate he was protected from the inclemencies of the weather; but to-night he was expecting Blakeney at the appointed hour and place. He had secured a cart of the ordinary ramshackle pattern used for carrying coal. Unfortunately there were no covered ones to be obtained in the neighbourhood, and equally unfortunately the thaw had set in with a blustering wind and driving rain, which made waiting in the open air for hours at a stretch and in complete darkness excessively unpleasant.
But for all these discomforts Sir Andrew Ffoulkes cared not one jot. In England, in his magnificent Suffolk home, he was a confirmed sybarite, in whose service every description of comfort and luxury had to be enrolled. Here tonight in the rough and tattered clothes of a coal-heaver, drenched to the skin, and crouching under the body of a cart that hardly sheltered him from the rain, he was as happy as a schoolboy out for a holiday.
Happy, but vaguely anxious.
He had no means of ascertaining the time. So many of the church-bells and clock towers had been silenced recently that not one of those welcome sounds penetrated to the dreary desolation of this canal wharf, with its abandoned carts standing ghostlike in a row. Darkness had set in very early in the afternoon, and the heavers had given up work soon after four o’clock.
For about an hour after that a certain animation had still reigned round the wharf, men crossing and going, one or two of the barges moving in or out alongside the quay. But for some time now darkness and silence had been the masters in this desolate spot, and that time had seemed to Sir Andrew an eternity. He had hobbled and tethered his horse, and stretched himself out at full length under the cart. Now and again he had crawled out from under this uncomfortable shelter and walked up and down in ankle-deep mud, trying to restore circulation in his stiffened limbs; now and again a kind of torpor had come over him, and he had fallen into a brief and restless sleep. He would at this moment have given half his fortune for knowledge of the exact time.
But through all this weary waiting he was never for a moment in doubt. Unlike Armand St. Just, he had the simplest, most perfect faith in his chief. He had been Blakeney’s constant companion in all these adventures for close upon four years now; the thought of failure, however vague, never once entered his mind.
He was only anxious for his chief’s welfare. He knew that he would succeed, but he would have liked to have spared him much of the physical fatigue and the nerve-racking strain of these hours that lay between the daring deed and the hope of safety. Therefore he was conscious of an acute tingling of his nerves, which went on even during the brief patches of fitful sleep, and through the numbness that invaded his whole body while the hours dragged wearily and slowly along.
Then, quite suddenly, he felt wakeful and alert; quite a while—even before he heard the welcome signal—he knew, with a curious, subtle sense of magnetism, that the hour had come, and that his chief was somewhere near by, not very far.
Then he heard the cry—a seamew’s call—repeated thrice at intervals, and five minutes later something loomed out of the darkness quite close to the hind wheels of the cart.
“Hist! Ffoulkes!” came in a soft whisper, scarce louder than the wind.
“Present!” came in quick response.
“Here, help me to lift the child into the cart. He is asleep, and has been a dead weight on my arm for close on an hour now. Have you a dry bit of sacking or something to lay him on?”
“Not very dry, I am afraid.”
With tender care the two men lifted the sleeping little King of France into the rickety cart. Blakeney laid his cloak over him, and listened for awhile to the slow regular breathing of the child.
“St. Just is not here—you know that?” said Sir Andrew after a while.
“Yes, I knew it,” replied Blakeney curtly.
It was characteristic of these two men that not a word about the adventure itself, about the terrible risks and dangers of the past few hours, was exchanged between them. The child was here and was safe, and Blakeney knew the whereabouts of St. Just—that was enough for Sir Andrew Ffoulkes, the most devoted follower, the most perfect friend the Scarlet Pimpernel would ever know.
Ffoulkes now went to the horse, detached the nose-bag, and undid the nooses of the hobble and of the tether.
“Will you get in now, Blakeney?” he said; “we are ready.”
And in unbroken silence they both got into the cart; Blakeney sitting on its floor beside the child, and Ffoulkes gathering the reins in his hands.
The wheels of the cart and the slow jog-trot of the horse made scarcely any noise in the mud of the roads, what noise they did make was effectually drowned by the soughing of the wind in the bare branches of the stunted acacia trees that edged the towpath along the line of the canal.
Sir Andrew had studied the topography of this desolate neighbourhood well during the past twenty-four hours; he knew of a detour that would enable him to avoid the La Villette gate and the neighbourhood of the fortifications, and yet bring him out soon on the road leading to St. Germain.
Once he turned to ask Blakeney the time.
“It must be close on ten now,” replied Sir Percy. “Push your nag along, old man. Tony and Hastings will be waiting for us.”
It was very difficult to see clearly even a metre or two ahead, but the road was a straight one, and the old nag seemed to know it almost as well and better than her driver. She shambled along at her own pace, covering the ground very slowly for Ffoulkes’s burning impatience. Once or twice he had to get down and lead her over a rough piece of ground. They passed several groups of dismal, squalid houses, in some of which a dim light still burned, and as they skirted St. Ouen the church clock slowly tolled the hour of midnight.
But for the greater part of the way derelict, uncultivated spaces of terrains vagues, and a few isolated houses lay between the road and the fortifications of the city. The darkness of the night, the late hour, the soughing of the wind, were all in favour of the adventurers; and a coal-cart slowly trudging along in this neighbourhood, with two labourers sitting in it, was the least likely of any vehicle to attract attention.
Past Clichy, they had to cross the river by the rickety wooden bridge that was unsafe even in broad daylight. They were not far from their destination now. Half a dozen kilometres further on they would be leaving Courbevoie on their left, and then the sign-post would come in sight. After that the spinney just off the road, and the welcome presence of Tony, Hastings, and the horses. Ffoulkes got down in order to make sure of the way. He walked at the horse’s head now, fearful lest he missed the cross-roads and the sign-post.
The horse was getting over-tired; it had covered fifteen kilometres, and it was close on three o’clock of Monday morning.
Another hour went by in absolute silence. Ffoulkes and Blakeney took turns at the horse’s head. Then at last they reached the cross-roads; even through the darkness the sign-post showed white against the surrounding gloom.
“This looks like it,” murmured Sir Andrew. He turned the horse’s head sharply towards the left, down a narrower road, and leaving the sign-post behind him. He walked slowly along for another quarter of an hour, then Blakeney called a halt.
“The spinney must be sharp on our right now,” he said.
He got down from the cart, and while Ffoulkes remained beside the horse, he plunged into the gloom. A moment later the cry of the seamew rang out three times into the air. It was answered almost immediately.
The spinney lay on the right of the road. Soon the soft sounds that to a trained ear invariably betray the presence of a number of horses reached Ffoulkes’ straining senses. He took his old nag out of the shafts, and the shabby harness from off her, then he turned her out on the piece of waste land that faced the spinney. Some one would find her in the morning, her and the cart with the shabby harness laid in it, and, having wondered if all these things had perchance dropped down from heaven, would quietly appropriate them, and mayhap thank much-maligned heaven for its gift.
Blakeney in the meanwhile had lifted the sleeping child out of the cart. Then he called to Sir Andrew and led the way across the road and into the spinney.
Five minutes later Hastings received the uncrowned King of France in his arms.
Unlike Ffoulkes, my Lord Tony wanted to hear all about the adventure of this afternoon. A thorough sportsman, he loved a good story of hairbreadth escapes, of dangers cleverly avoided, risks taken and conquered.
“Just in ten words, Blakeney,” he urged entreatingly; “how did you actually get the boy away?”
Sir Percy laughed—despite himself—at the young man’s eagerness.
“Next time we meet, Tony,” he begged; “I am so demmed fatigued, and there’s this beastly rain—”
“No, no—now! while Hastings sees to the horses. I could not exist long without knowing, and we are well sheltered from the rain under this tree.”
“Well, then, since you will have it,” he began with a laugh, which despite the weariness and anxiety of the past twenty-four hours had forced itself to his lips, “I have been sweeper and man-of-all-work at the Temple for the past few weeks, you must know—”
“No!” ejaculated my Lord Tony lustily. “By gum!”
“Indeed, you old sybarite, whilst you were enjoying yourself heaving coal on the canal wharf, I was scrubbing floors, lighting fires, and doing a number of odd jobs for a lot of demmed murdering villains, and”—he added under his breath—“incidentally, too, for our league. Whenever I had an hour or two off duty I spent them in my lodgings, and asked you all to come and meet me there.”
“By Gad, Blakeney! Then the day before yesterday?—when we all met—”
“I had just had a bath—sorely needed, I can tell you. I had been cleaning boots half the day, but I had heard that the Simons were removing from the Temple on the Sunday, and had obtained an order from them to help them shift their furniture.”
“Cleaning boots!” murmured my Lord Tony with a chuckle. “Well! and then?”
“Well, then everything worked out splendidly. You see by that time I was a well-known figure in the Temple. Heron knew me well. I used to be his lanthorn-bearer when at nights he visited that poor mite in his prison. It was ‘Dupont, here! Dupont there!’ all day long. ‘Light the fire in the office, Dupont! Dupont, brush my coat! Dupont, fetch me a light!’ When the Simons wanted to move their household goods they called loudly for Dupont. I got a covered laundry cart, and I brought a dummy with me to substitute for the child. Simon himself knew nothing of this, but Madame was in my pay. The dummy was just splendid, with real hair on its head; Madame helped me to substitute it for the child; we laid it on the sofa and covered it over with a rug, even while those brutes Heron and Cochefer were on the landing outside, and we stuffed His Majesty the King of France into a linen basket. The room was badly lighted, and any one would have been deceived. No one was suspicious of that type of trickery, so it went off splendidly. I moved the furniture of the Simons out of the Tower. His Majesty King Louis XVII was still concealed in the linen basket. I drove the Simons to their new lodgings—the man still suspects nothing—and there I helped them to unload the furniture—with the exception of the linen basket, of course. After that I drove my laundry cart to a house I knew of and collected a number of linen baskets, which I had arranged should be in readiness for me. Thus loaded up I left Paris by the Vincennes gate, and drove as far as Bagnolet, where there is no road except past the octroi, where the officials might have proved unpleasant. So I lifted His Majesty out of the basket and we walked on hand in hand in the darkness and the rain until the poor little feet gave out. Then the little fellow—who has been wonderfully plucky throughout, indeed, more a Capet than a Bourbon—snuggled up in my arms and went fast asleep, and—and—well, I think that’s all, for here we are, you see.”
“But if Madame Simon had not been amenable to bribery?” suggested Lord Tony after a moment’s silence.
“Then I should have had to think of something else.”
“If during the removal of the furniture Heron had remained resolutely in the room?”
“Then, again, I should have had to think of something else; but remember that in life there is always one supreme moment when Chance—who is credited to have but one hair on her head—stands by you for a brief space of time; sometimes that space is infinitesimal—one minute, a few seconds—just the time to seize Chance by that one hair. So I pray you all give me no credit in this or any other matter in which we all work together, but the quickness of seizing Chance by the hair during the brief moment when she stands by my side. If Madame Simon had been un-amenable, if Heron had remained in the room all the time, if Cochefer had had two looks at the dummy instead of one—well, then, something else would have helped me, something would have occurred; something—I know not what—but surely something which Chance meant to be on our side, if only we were quick enough to seize it—and so you see how simple it all is.”
So simple, in fact, that it was sublime. The daring, the pluck, the ingenuity and, above all, the super-human heroism and endurance which rendered the hearers of this simple narrative, simply told, dumb with admiration.
Their thoughts now were beyond verbal expression.
“How soon was the hue and cry for the child about the streets?” asked Tony, after a moment’s silence.
“It was not out when I left the gates of Paris,” said Blakeney meditatively; “so quietly has the news of the escape been kept, that I am wondering what devilry that brute Heron can be after. And now no more chattering,” he continued lightly; “all to horse, and you, Hastings, have a care. The destinies of France, mayhap, will be lying asleep in your arms.”
“But you, Blakeney?” exclaimed the three men almost simultaneously.
“I am not going with you. I entrust the child to you. For God’s sake guard him well! Ride with him to Mantes. You should arrive there at about ten o’clock. One of you then go straight to No.9 Rue la Tour. Ring the bell; an old man will answer it. Say the one word to him, ‘Enfant’; he will reply, ‘De roi!’ Give him the child, and may Heaven bless you all for the help you have given me this night!”
“But you, Blakeney?” reiterated Tony with a note of deep anxiety in his fresh young voice.
“I am straight for Paris,” he said quietly.
“Impossible!”
“Therefore feasible.”
“But why? Percy, in the name of Heaven, do you realise what you are doing?”
“Perfectly.”
“They’ll not leave a stone unturned to find you—they know by now, believe me, that your hand did this trick.”
“I know that.”
“And yet you mean to go back?”
“And yet I am going back.”
“Blakeney!”
“It’s no use, Tony. Armand is in Paris. I saw him in the corridor of the Temple prison in the company of Chauvelin.”
“Great God!” exclaimed Lord Hastings.
The others were silent. What was the use of arguing? One of themselves was in danger. Armand St. Just, the brother of Marguerite Blakeney! Was it likely that Percy would leave him in the lurch.
“One of us will stay with you, of course?” asked Sir Andrew after awhile.
“Yes! I want Hastings and Tony to take the child to Mantes, then to make all possible haste for Calais, and there to keep in close touch with the Day-Dream; the skipper will contrive to open communication. Tell him to remain in Calais waters. I hope I may have need of him soon.
“And now to horse, both of you,” he added gaily. “Hastings, when you are ready, I will hand up the child to you. He will be quite safe on the pillion with a strap round him and you.”
Nothing more was said after that. The orders were given, there was nothing to do but to obey; and the uncrowned King of France was not yet out of danger. Hastings and Tony led two of the horses out of the spinney; at the roadside they mounted, and then the little lad for whose sake so much heroism, such selfless devotion had been expended, was hoisted up, still half asleep, on the pillion in front of my Lord Hastings.
“Keep your arm round him,” admonished Blakeney; “your horse looks quiet enough. But put on speed as far as Mantes, and may Heaven guard you both!”
The two men pressed their heels to their horses’ flanks, the beasts snorted and pawed the ground anxious to start. There were a few whispered farewells, two loyal hands were stretched out at the last, eager to grasp the leader’s hand.
Then horses and riders disappeared in the utter darkness which comes before the dawn.
Blakeney and Ffoulkes stood side by side in silence for as long as the pawing of hoofs in the mud could reach their ears, then Ffoulkes asked abruptly:
“What do you want me to do, Blakeney?”
“Well, for the present, my dear fellow, I want you to take one of the three horses we have left in the spinney, and put him into the shafts of our old friend the coal-cart; then I am afraid that you must go back the way we came.”
“Yes?”
“Continue to heave coal on the canal wharf by La Villette; it is the best way to avoid attention. After your day’s work keep your cart and horse in readiness against my arrival, at the same spot where you were last night. If after having waited for me like this for three consecutive nights you neither see nor hear anything from me, go back to England and tell Marguerite that in giving my life for her brother I gave it for her!”
“Blakeney—!”
“I spoke differently to what I usually do, is that it?” he interposed, placing his firm hand on his friend’s shoulder. “I am degenerating, Ffoulkes—that’s what it is. Pay no heed to it. I suppose that carrying that sleeping child in my arms last night softened some nerves in my body. I was so infinitely sorry for the poor mite, and vaguely wondered if I had not saved it from one misery only to plunge it in another. There was such a fateful look on that wan little face, as if destiny had already writ its veto there against happiness. It came on me then how futile were our actions, if God chooses to interpose His will between us and our desires.”
Almost as he left off speaking the rain ceased to patter down against the puddles in the road. Overhead the clouds flew by at terrific speed, driven along by the blustering wind. It was less dark now, and Sir Andrew, peering through the gloom, could see his leader’s face. It was singularly pale and hard, and the deep-set lazy eyes had in them just that fateful look which he himself had spoken of just now.
“You are anxious about Armand, Percy?” asked Ffoulkes softly.
“Yes. He should have trusted me, as I had trusted him. He missed me at the Villette gate on Friday, and without a thought left me—left us all in the lurch; he threw himself into the lion’s jaws, thinking that he could help the girl he loved. I knew that I could save her. She is in comparative safety even now. The old woman, Madame Belhomme, had been freely released the day after her arrest, but Jeanne Lange is still in the house in the Rue de Charonne. You know it, Ffoulkes. I got her there early this morning. It was easy for me, of course: ‘Hola, Dupont! my boots, Dupont!’ ‘One moment, citizen, my daughter—’ ‘Curse thy daughter, bring me my boots!’ and Jeanne Lange walked out of the Temple prison her hand in that of that lout Dupont.”
“But Armand does not know that she is in the Rue de Charonne?”
“No. I have not seen him since that early morning on Saturday when he came to tell me that she had been arrested. Having sworn that he would obey me, he went to meet you and Tony at La Villette, but returned to Paris a few hours later, and drew the undivided attention of all the committees on Jeanne Lange by his senseless, foolish inquiries. But for his action throughout the whole of yesterday I could have smuggled Jeanne out of Paris, got her to join you at Villette, or Hastings in St. Germain. But the barriers were being closely watched for her, and I had the Dauphin to think of. She is in comparative safety; the people in the Rue de Charonne are friendly for the moment; but for how long? Who knows? I must look after her of course. And Armand! Poor old Armand! The lion’s jaws have snapped over him, and they hold him tight. Chauvelin and his gang are using him as a decoy to trap me, of course. All that had not happened if Armand had trusted me.”
He sighed a quick sigh of impatience, almost of regret. Ffoulkes was the one man who could guess the bitter disappointment that this had meant. Percy had longed to be back in England soon, back to Marguerite, to a few days of unalloyed happiness and a few days of peace.
Now Armand’s actions had retarded all that; they were a deliberate bar to the future as it had been mapped out by a man who foresaw everything, who was prepared for every eventuality.
In this case, too, he had been prepared, but not for the want of trust which had brought on disobedience akin to disloyalty. That absolutely unforeseen eventuality had changed Blakeney’s usual irresponsible gaiety into a consciousness of the inevitable, of the inexorable decrees of Fate.
With an anxious sigh, Sir Andrew turned away from his chief and went back to the spinney to select for his own purpose one of the three horses which Hastings and Tony had unavoidably left behind.
“And you, Blakeney—how will you go back to that awful Paris?” he said, when he had made his choice and was once more back beside Percy.
“I don’t know yet,” replied Blakeney, “but it would not be safe to ride. I’ll reach one of the gates on this side of the city and contrive to slip in somehow. I have a certificate of safety in my pocket in case I need it.
“We’ll leave the horses here,” he said presently, whilst he was helping Sir Andrew to put the horse in the shafts of the coal-cart; “they cannot come to much harm. Some poor devil might steal them, in order to escape from those vile brutes in the city. If so, God speed him, say I. I’ll compensate my friend the farmer of St. Germain for their loss at an early opportunity. And now, good-bye, my dear fellow! Some time to-night, if possible, you shall hear direct news of me—if not, then to-morrow or the day after that. Good-bye, and Heaven guard you!”
“God guard you, Blakeney!” said Sir Andrew fervently.
He jumped into the cart and gathered up the reins. His heart was heavy as lead, and a strange mist had gathered in his eyes, blurring the last dim vision which he had of his chief standing all alone in the gloom, his broad, magnificent figure looking almost weirdly erect and defiant, his head thrown back, and his kind, lazy eyes watching the final departure of his most faithful comrade and friend.