Lord Tony's Wife Part 22

"And how is the whole thing to be accomplished? The wench is in my sister's house at present ... the father is in the Rat Mort...."

"And the Rat Mort is an excellent place.... I know of none better. It is one of the worst-famed houses in the whole of Nantes ... the meeting-place of all the vagabonds, the thieves and the cut-throats of the city."

"Yes! I know that to my cost. My sister's house is next door to it. At night the street is not safe for decent females to be abroad: and though there is a platoon of Marats on guard at Le Bouffay close by, they do nothing to free the neighbourhood of that pest."

"Bah!" retorted Carrier with cynical indifference, "they have more important quarry to net. Rebels and traitors swarm in Nantes, what?

Commandant Fleury has had no time hitherto to waste on mere cut-throats, although I had thoughts before now of razing the place to the ground.

Citizen Lamberty has his lodgings on the other side and he does nothing but complain of the brawls that go on there o' nights. Sure it is that while a stone of the Rat Mort remains standing all the night-hawks of Nantes will congregate around it and brew mischief there which is no good to me and no good to the Republic."

"Yes! I know all about the Rat Mort. I found a night's shelter there four years ago when...."

"When the ci-devant duc de Kernogan was busy hanging your father--the miller--for a crime which he never committed. Well then, citizen Martin-Roget," continued Carrier with one of his hideous leers, "since you know the Rat Mort so well what say you to your fair and stately Yvonne de Kernogan and her father being captured there in the company of the lowest sc.u.m of the population of Nantes?"

"You mean ...?" murmured Martin-Roget, who had become livid with excitement.

"I mean that my Marats have orders to raid some of the haunts of our Nantese cut-throats, and that they may as well begin to-night and with the Rat Mort. They will make a descent on the house and a thorough perquisition, and every person--man, woman and child--found on the premises will be arrested and sent with a batch of malefactors to Paris, there to be tried as felons and criminals and deported to Cayenne where they will, I trust, rot as convicts in that pestilential climate. Think you," concluded the odious creature with a sneer, "that when put face to face with the alternative, your Kernogan wench will still refuse to become the wife of a fine patriot like yourself?"

"I don't know," murmured Martin-Roget. "I ... I...."

"But I do know," broke in Carrier roughly, "that ten thousand francs is far too little to pay for so brilliant a realisation of all one's hopes.

Ten thousand francs? 'Tis an hundred thousand you should give to show your grat.i.tude."

Martin-Roget rose and stretched his large, heavy figure to its full height. He was at great pains to conceal the utter contempt which he felt for the abominable wretch before whom he was forced to cringe.

"You shall have ten thousand francs, citizen Carrier," he said slowly; "it is all that I possess in the world now--the last remaining fragment of a sum of twenty-five thousand francs which I earned and sc.r.a.ped together for the past four years. You have had five thousand francs already. And you shall have the other ten. I do not grudge it. If twenty years of my life were any use to you, I would give you that, in exchange for the help you are giving me in what means far more than life to me."

The proconsul laughed and shrugged his shoulders--of a truth he thought citizen Martin-Roget an awful fool.

"Very well then," he said, "we will call the matter settled. I confess that it amuses me, although remember that I have warned you. With all these aristos, I believe in the potency of my barges rather than in your elaborate schemes. Still! it shall never be said that Jean Baptiste Carrier has left a friend in the lurch."

"I am grateful for your help, citizen Carrier," said Martin-Roget coldly. Then he added slowly, as if reviewing the situation in his own mind: "To-night, you say?"

"Yes. To-night. My Marats under the command of citizen Fleury will make a descent upon the Rat Mort. Those shall be my orders. The place will be swept clean of every man, woman and child who is inside. If your two Kernogans are there ... well!" he said with a cynical laugh and a shrug of his shoulders, "they can be sent up to Paris with the rest of the herd."

"The dinner bell has gone long ago," here interposed young Lalouet drily, "the soup will be stone-cold and the chef red-hot with anger."

"You are right, citizen Lalouet," said Carrier as he leaned back in his chair once more and stretched out his long legs at his ease. "We have wasted far too much time already over the affairs of a couple of aristos, who ought to have been at the bottom of the Loire a week ago.

The audience is ended," he added airily, and he made a gesture of overweening condescension, for all the world like the one wherewith the _Grand Monarque_ was wont to dismiss his courtiers.

Chauvelin rose too and quietly turned to the door. He had not spoken a word for the past half-hour, ever since in fact he had put in a conciliatory word on behalf of his impetuous colleague. Whether he had taken an active interest in the conversation or not it were impossible to say. But now, just as he was ready to go, and young Lalouet prepared to close the doors of the audience chamber, something seemed suddenly to occur to him and he called somewhat peremptorily to the young man.

"One moment, citizen," he said.

"What is it now?" queried the youth insolently, and from his fine eyes there shot a glance of contempt on the meagre figure of the once powerful Terrorist.

"About the Kernogan wench," continued Chauvelin. "She will have to be conveyed some time before night to the tavern next door. There may be agencies at work on her behalf...."

"Agencies?" broke in the boy gruffly. "What agencies?"

"Oh!" said Chauvelin vaguely, "we all know that aristos have powerful friends these days. It will not be over safe to take the girl across after dark from one house to another ... the alley is badly lighted: the wench will not go willingly. She might scream and create a disturbance and draw ... er ... those same unknown agencies to her rescue. I think a body of Marats should be told off to convey her to the Rat Mort...."

Young Lalouet shrugged his shoulders.

"That's your affair," he said curtly. "Eh, Carrier?" And he glanced over his shoulder at the proconsul, who at once a.s.sented.

Martin-Roget--struck by his colleague's argument--would have interposed, but Carrier broke in with one of his uncontrolled outbursts of fury.

"Ah ca," he exclaimed, "enough of this now. Citizen Lalouet is right and I have done enough for you already. If you want the Kernogan wench to be at the Rat Mort, you must see to getting her there yourself. She is next door, what? I won't have anything to do with it and I won't have my Marats implicated in the affair either. Name of a dog! have I not told you that I am beset with spies? It would of a truth be a climax if I was denounced as having dragged aristos to a house of ill-fame and then had them arrested there as malefactors! Now out with you! I have had enough of this! If your rabble is at the Rat Mort to-night, they shall be arrested with all the other cut-throats. That is my last word. The rest is your affair. Lalouet! the door!"

And without another word, and without listening to further protests from Martin-Roget or Chauvelin, Jacques Lalouet closed the doors of the audience chamber in their face.

VII

Outside on the landing, Martin-Roget swore a violent, all comprehensive oath.

"To think that we are under the heel of that skunk!" he said.

"And that in the pursuit of our own ends we have need of his help!"

added Chauvelin with a sigh.

"If it were not for that.... And even now," continued Martin-Roget moodily, "I doubt what I can do. Yvonne de Kernogan will not follow me willingly either to the Rat Mort or elsewhere, and if I am not to have her conveyed by the guard...."

He paused and swore again. His companion's silence appeared to irritate him.

"What do you advise me to do, citizen Chauvelin?" he asked.

"For the moment," replied Chauvelin imperturbably, "I should advise you to join me in a walk along the quay as far as Le Bouffay. I have work to see to inside the building and the north-westerly wind is sure to be of good counsel."

An angry retort hovered on Martin-Roget's lips, but after a second or two he succeeded in holding his irascible temper in check. He gave a quick sigh of impatience.

"Very well," he said curtly. "Let us to Le Bouffay by all means. I have much to think on, and as you say the north-westerly wind may blow away the cobwebs which for the nonce do o'ercloud my brain."

And the two men wrapped their mantles closely round their shoulders, for the air was keen. Then they descended the staircase of the hotel and went out into the street.

CHAPTER II

LE BOUFFAY

I

In the centre of the Place the guillotine stood idle--the paint had worn off her sides--she looked weatherbeaten and forlorn--stern and forbidding still, but in a kind of sullen loneliness, with the ugly stains of crimson on her, turned to rust and grime.

The Place itself was deserted, in strange contrast to the bustle and the movement which characterised it in the days when the death of men, women and children was a daily spectacle here for the crowd. Then a constant stream of traffic, of carts and of tumbrils, of soldiers and gaffers enc.u.mbered it in every corner, now a few tumble-down booths set up against the frontage of the grim edifice--once the stronghold of the Dukes of Brittany, now little else but a huge prison--a few vendors and still fewer purchasers of the scanty wares displayed under their ragged awnings, one or two idlers loafing against the mud-stained walls, one or two urchins playing in the gutters were the only signs of life.