Lord Tony's Wife Part 28

As he did so an exclamation of wrath or of impatience escaped him from time to time, once he laughed--involuntarily--aloud.

The examination of the papers took him some time. When he had finished he gathered them all together again, retied the bit of ribbon round them and slipped the packet back into the pocket of his coat. There was a look of grim determination on his face, even though a bitter sigh escaped his set lips.

"Oh! for the power," he muttered to himself, "which I had a year ago!

for the power to deal with mine enemy myself. So you have come to Nantes, my valiant Sir Percy Blakeney?" he added while a short, sardonic laugh escaped his thin, set lips: "and you are determined that I shall know how and why you came! Do you reckon, I wonder, that I have no longer the power to deal with you? Well!..."

He sighed again but with more satisfaction this time.

"Well!..." he reiterated with obvious complacency. "Unless that oaf Carrier is a bigger fool than I imagine him to be I think I have you this time, my elusive Scarlet Pimpernel."

CHAPTER IV

THE NET

I

It was not an easy thing to obtain an audience of the great proconsul at this hour of the night, nor was Chauvelin, the disgraced servant of the Committee of Public Safety, a man to be considered. Carrier, with his love of ostentation and of tyranny, found great delight in keeping his colleagues waiting upon his pleasure, and he knew that he could trust young Jacques Lalouet to be as insolent as any tyrant's flunkey of yore.

"I must speak with the proconsul at once," had been Chauvelin's urgent request of Fleury, the commandant of the great man's bodyguard.

"The proconsul dines at this hour," had been Fleury's curt reply.

"'Tis a matter which concerns the welfare and the safety of the State!"

"The proconsul's health is the concern of the State too, and he dines at this hour and must not be disturbed."

"Commandant Fleury!" urged Chauvelin, "you risk being implicated in a disaster. Danger and disgrace threaten the proconsul and all his adherents. I must speak with citizen Carrier at once."

Fortunately for Chauvelin there were two keys which, when all else failed, were apt to open the doors of Carrier's stronghold: the key of fear and that of cupidity. He tried both and succeeded. He bribed and he threatened: he endured Fleury's brutality and Lalouet's impertinence but he got his way. After an hour's weary waiting and ceaseless parleyings he was once more ushered into the antechamber where he had sat earlier in the day. The doors leading to the inner sanctuary were open. Young Jacques Lalouet stood by them on guard. Carrier, fuming and raging at having been disturbed, vented his spleen and ill-temper on Chauvelin.

"If the news that you bring me is not worth my consideration," he cried savagely, "I'll send you to moulder in Le Bouffay or to drink the waters of the Loire."

Chauvelin silent, self-effaced, allowed the flood of the great man's wrath to spend itself in threats. Then he said quietly:

"Citizen proconsul I have come to tell you that the English spy, who is called the Scarlet Pimpernel, is now in Nantes. There is a reward of twenty thousand francs for his capture and I want your help to lay him by the heels."

Carrier suddenly paused in his ravings. He sank into a chair and a livid hue spread over his face.

"It's not true!" he murmured hoa.r.s.ely.

"I saw him--not an hour ago...."

"What proof have you?"

"I'll show them to you--but not across this threshold. Let me enter, citizen proconsul, and close your sanctuary doors behind me rather than before. What I have come hither to tell you, can only be said between four walls."

"I'll make you tell me," broke in Carrier in a raucous voice, which excitement and fear caused almost to choke in his throat. "I'll make you ... curse you for the traitor that you are.... Curse you!" he cried more vigorously, "I'll make you speak. Will you shield a spy by your silence, you miserable traitor? If you do I'll send you to rot in the mud of the Loire with other traitors less accursed than yourself."

"If you only knew," was Chauvelin's calm rejoinder to the other's ravings, "how little I care for life. I only live to be even one day with an enemy whom I hate. That enemy is now in Nantes, but I am like a bird of prey whose wings have been clipped. If you do not help me mine enemy will again go free--and death in that case matters little or nothing to me."

For a moment longer Carrier hesitated. Fear had gripped him by the throat. Chauvelin's earnestness seemed to vouch for the truth of his a.s.sertion, and if this were so--if those English spies were indeed in Nantes--then his own life was in deadly danger. He--like every one of those bloodthirsty tyrants who had misused the sacred names of Fraternity and of Equality--had learned to dread the machinations of those mysterious Englishmen and of their unconquerable leader. Popular superst.i.tion had it that they were spies of the English Government and that they were not only bent on saving traitors from well-merited punishment but that they were hired a.s.sa.s.sins paid by Mr. Pitt to murder every faithful servant of the Republic. The name of the Scarlet Pimpernel, so significantly uttered by Chauvelin, had turned Carrier's sallow cheeks to a livid hue. Sick with terror now he called Lalouet to him. He clung to the boy with both arms as to the one being in this world whom he trusted.

"What shall we do, Jacques?" he murmured hoa.r.s.ely, "shall we let him in?"

The boy roughly shook himself free from the embrace of the great proconsul.

"If you want twenty thousand francs," he said with a dry laugh, "I should listen quietly to what citizen Chauvelin has to say."

Terror and rapacity were ranged on one side against inordinate vanity.

The thought of twenty thousand francs made Carrier's ugly mouth water.

Money was ever scarce these days: also the fear of a.s.sa.s.sination was a spectre which haunted him at all hours of the day and night. On the other hand he positively worshipped the mystery wherewith he surrounded himself. It had been his boast for some time now that no one save the chosen few had crossed the threshold of his private chamber: and he was miserably afraid not only of Chauvelin's possible evil intentions, but also that this despicable ex-aristo and equally despicable failure would boast in the future of an ascendancy over him.

He thought the matter over for fully five minutes, during which there was dead silence in the two rooms--silence only broken by the stertorous breathing of that wretched coward, and the measured ticking of the fine Buhl clock behind him. Chauvelin's pale eyes were fixed upon the darkness, through which he could vaguely discern the uncouth figure of the proconsul, sprawling over his desk. Which way would his pa.s.sions sway him? Chauvelin as he watched and waited felt that his habitual self-control was perhaps more severely taxed at this moment than it had ever been before. Upon the swaying of those pa.s.sions, the pa.s.sions of a man infinitely craven and infinitely base, depended all his--Chauvelin's--hopes of getting even at last with a daring and resourceful foe. Terror and rapacity were the counsellors which ranged themselves on the side of his schemes, but mere vanity and caprice fought a hard battle too.

In the end it was rapacity that gained the victory. An impatient exclamation from young Lalouet roused Carrier from his sombre brooding and hastened on a decision which was destined to have such momentous consequences for the future of both these men.

"Introduce citizen Chauvelin in here, Lalouet," said the proconsul grudgingly. "I will listen to what he has to say."

II

Chauvelin crossed the threshold of the tyrant's sanctuary, in no way awed by the majesty of that dreaded presence or confused by the air of mystery which hung about the room.

He did not even bestow a glance on the mult.i.tudinous objects of art and the priceless furniture which littered the tiger's lair. His pale face remained quite expressionless as he bowed solemnly before Carrier and then took the chair which was indicated to him. Young Lalouet fetched a candelabra from the ante-room and carried it into the audience chamber: then he closed the communicating doors. The candelabra he placed on a console-table immediately behind Carrier's desk and chair, so that the latter's face remained in complete shadow, whilst the light fell full upon Chauvelin.

"Well! what is it?" queried the proconsul roughly. "What is this story of English spies inside Nantes? How did they get here? Who is responsible for keeping such rabble out of our city? Name of a dog, but some one has been careless of duty! and carelessness these days is closely allied to treason."

He talked loudly and volubly--his inordinate terror causing the words to come tumbling, almost incoherently, out of his mouth. Finally he turned on Chauvelin with a snarl like an angry cat:

"And how comes it, citizen," he added savagely, "that you alone here in Nantes are acquainted with the whereabouts of those dangerous spies?"

"I caught sight of them," rejoined Chauvelin calmly, "this afternoon after I left you. I knew we should have them here, the moment citizen Martin-Roget brought the Kernogans into the city. The woman is the wife of one of them."

"Curse that blundering fool Martin-Roget for bringing that rabble about our ears, and those a.s.sa.s.sins inside our gates."

"Nay! Why should you complain, citizen proconsul," rejoined Chauvelin in his blandest manner. "Surely you are not going to let the English spies escape this time? And if you succeed in laying them by the heels--there where every one else has failed--you will have earned twenty thousand francs and the thanks of the entire Committee of Public Safety."

He paused: and young Lalouet interposed with his impudent laugh:

"Go on, citizen Chauvelin," he said, "if there is twenty thousand francs to be made out of this game, I'll warrant that the proconsul will take a hand in it--eh, Carrier?"

And with the insolent familiarity of a terrier teasing a grizzly he tweaked the great man's ear.

Chauvelin in the meanwhile had drawn the packet of papers from his pocket and untied the ribbon that held them together. He now spread the papers out on the desk.