The provost demurred: an altercation might have ensued when Chauvelin's suave voice poured oil on the troubled waters.
"Why not," he said, "let the town guard continue their search on the island, citizen commandant? The men may succeed in digging our rat out of his hole and forcing him out into the open all the sooner. Your Marats will have him quickly enough after that."
To this suggestion the provost gave a grudging assent. The reward when the English spy was caught could be fought for later on. For the nonce he turned unceremoni
[319] ously on his heel, and left Fleury cursing him for a meddlesome busybody.
"So long as he and his rabble does not interfere with my Marats," growled the commandant.
"Will you see your sergeants, citizen?" queried Chauvelin tentatively. "They will have to keep very much on the alert, and will require constant prodding to their vigilance. If I can be of any service...."
"No," retorted Fleury curtly, "you and citizen Martin-Roget had best try and see the proconsul and tell him what we have done."
"He'll be half wild with terror when he hears that the English spy is at large upon the island."
"You must pacify him as best you can. Tell him I have a score of Marats at every bridge head and that I am looking personally to every arrangement. There is no escape for the devil possible save by drowning himself and the wench in the Loire."
III
Chauvelin and Martin-Roget turned from the quay on to the Petite Hollande—the great open ground with its converging row of trees which ends at the very apex of the Isle of Feydeau. Opposite to them at the further corner of the Place was the Hôtel de la Villestreux. One or two of the windows in the hotel were lighted from within. No doubt the proconsul was awake, trembling in the remotest angle of his lair, with the spectre of assassination rampant before him—aroused by the continued disturbance of the night, by the feverishness of this man-hunt carried on almost at his gates.
Even through the darkness it was easy to perceive groups of people either rushing backwards and forwards on the[320] Place or congregating in groups under the trees. Excitement was in the air. It could be felt and heard right through the soughing of the north-westerly wind which caused the bare branches of the trees to groan and to crackle, and the dead leaves, which still hung on the twigs, to fly wildly through the night.
In the centre of the Place, two small lights, gleaming like eyes in the midst of the gloom, betrayed the presence of the proconsul's coach, which stood there as always, ready to take him away to a place of safety—away from this city where he was mortally hated and dreaded—whenever the spectre of terror became more insistent than usual, and drove him hence out of his stronghold. The horses were pawing the frozen ground and champing their bits—the steam from their nostrils caught the rays of the carriage lamps, which also lit up with a feeble flicker the vague outline of the coachman on his box and of the postilion rigid in his saddle.
The citizens of Nantes were never tired of gaping at the carriage—a huge C-springed barouche—at the coachman's fine caped coat of bottle-green cloth and at the horses with their handsome harness set off with heavy brass bosses: they never tired of bandying words with the successive coachmen as they mounted their box and gathered up the reins, or with the postilions who loved to crack their whips and to appear smart and well-groomed, in the midst of the squalor which reigned in the terror-stricken city. They were the guardians of the mighty proconsul: on their skill, quickness and presence of mind might depend his precious life.
Even when the shadow of death hangs over an entire community, there will be some who will stand and gape and crack jokes at an uncommon sight.[321]
And now when the pall of night hung over the abode of the man-tiger and his lair, and wrapped in its embrace the hunted and the hunters, there still was a knot of people standing round the carriage—between it and the hotel—gazing with lack-lustre eyes on the costly appurtenances wherewith the representative of a wretched people loved to surround himself. They could only see the solid mass of the carriage and of the horses, but they could hear the coachman clicking with his tongue and the postilion cracking his whip, and these sights broke the absolute dreary monotony of their lives.
It was from behind this knot of gaffers that there rose gradually a tumult as of a man calling out in wrath and lashing himself into a fury. Chauvelin and Martin-Roget were just then crossing La Petite Hollande from one bank of the river to the other: they were walking rapidly towards the hotel, when they heard the tumult which presently culminated in a hoarse cry and a volley of oaths.
"My coach! my coach at once.... Lalouët, don't leave me.... Curse you all for a set of cowardly oafs.... My coach I say...."
"The proconsul," murmured Chauvelin as he hastened forward, Martin-Roget following closely on his heels.
By the time that they had come near enough to the coach to distinguish vaguely in the gloom what was going on, people came rushing to the same spot from end to end of the Place. In a moment there was quite a crowd round the carriage, and the two men had much ado to push their way through by a vigorous play of their elbows.
"Citizen Carrier!" cried Chauvelin at the top of his voice, trying to dominate the hubbub, "one minute ... I have excellent news for you.... The English spy...."
"Curse you for a set of blundering fools," came with a[322] husky cry from out the darkness, "you have let that English devil escape ... I knew it ... I knew it ... the assassin is at large ... the murderer ... my coach at once ... my coach.... Lalouët—do not leave me."
Chauvelin had by this time succeeded in pushing his way to the forefront of the crowd: Martin-Roget, tall and powerful, had effectually made a way for him. Through the dense gloom he could see the misshapen form of the proconsul, wildly gesticulating with one arm and with the other clinging convulsively to young Lalouët who already had his hand on the handle of the carriage door.
With a quick, resolute gesture Chauvelin stepped between the door and the advancing proconsul.
"Citizen Carrier," he said with calm determination, "on my oath there is no cause for alarm. Your life is absolutely safe.... I entreat you to return to your lodgings...."
To emphasise his words he had stretched out a hand and firmly grasped the proconsul's coat sleeve. This gesture, however, instead of pacifying the apparently terror-stricken maniac, seemed to have the effect of further exasperating his insensate fear. With a loud oath he tore himself free from Chauvelin's grasp.
"Ten thousand devils," he cried hoarsely, "who is this fool who dares to interfere with me? Stand aside man ... stand aside or...."
And before Chauvelin could utter another word or Martin-Roget come to his colleague's rescue, there came the sudden sharp report of a pistol; the horses reared, the crowd was scattered in every direction, Chauvelin was knocked over by a smart blow on the head whilst a vigorous drag on his shoulder alone saved him from falling under the wheels of the coach.
Whilst confusion was at its highest, the carriage door[323] was closed to with a bang and there was a loud, commanding cry hurled through the window at the coachman on his box.
"En avant, citizen coachman! Drive for your life! through the Savenay gate. The English assassins are on our heels."
The postilion cracked his whip. The horses, maddened by the report, by the pushing, jostling crowd and the confused cries and screams around, plunged forward, wild with excitement. Their hoofs clattered on the hard road. Some of the crowd ran after the coach across the Place, shouting lustily: "The proconsul! the proconsul!"
Chauvelin—dazed and bruised—was picked up by Martin-Roget.
"The cowardly brute!" was all that he said between his teeth, "he shall rue this outrage as soon as I can give my mind to his affairs. In the meanwhile...."
The clatter of the horses' hoofs was already dying away in the distance. For a few seconds longer the rattle of the coach was still accompanied by cries of "The proconsul! the proconsul!" Fleury at the bridge head, seeing and hearing its app
roach, had only just time to order his Marats to stand at attention. A salvo should have been fired when the representative of the people, the high and mighty proconsul, was abroad, but there was no time for that, and the coach clattered over the bridge at breakneck speed, whilst Carrier with his head out of the window was hurling anathemas and insults at Fleury for having allowed the paid spies of that cursed British Government to threaten the life of a representative of the people.
"I go to Savenay," he shouted just at the last, "until that assassin has been thrown in the Loire. But when I return ... look to yourself commandant Fleury."
[324]Then the carriage turned down the Quai de la Fosse and a few minutes later was swallowed up by the gloom.
IV
Chauvelin, supported by Martin-Roget, was hobbling back across the Place. The crowd was still standing about, vaguely wondering why it had got so excited over the departure of the proconsul and the rattle of a coach and pair across the bridge, when on the island there was still an assassin at large—an English spy, the capture of whom would be one of the great events in the chronicles of the city of Nantes.
"I think," said Martin-Roget, "that we may as well go to bed now, and leave the rest to commandant Fleury. The Englishman may not be captured for some hours, and I for one am over-fatigued."
"Then go to bed an you desire, citizen Martin-Roget," retorted Chauvelin drily, "I for one will stay here until I see the Englishman in the hands of commandant Fleury."
"Hark," interposed Martin-Roget abruptly. "What was that?"
Chauvelin had paused even before Martin-Roget's restraining hand had rested on his arm. He stood still in the middle of the Place and his knees shook under him so that he nearly fell prone to the ground.
"What is it?" reiterated Martin-Roget with vague puzzlement. "It sounds like young Lalouët's voice."
Chauvelin said nothing. He had forgotten his bruises: he no longer hobbled—he ran across the Place to the front of the hotel whence the voice had come which was so like that of young Lalouët.
The youngster—it was undoubtedly he—was standing at[325] the angle of the hotel: above him a lanthorn threw a dim circle of light on his bare head with its mass of dark curls, and on a small knot of idlers with two or three of the town guard amongst them. The first words spoken by him which Chauvelin distinguished quite clearly were:
"You are all mad ... or else drunk.... The citizen proconsul is upstairs in his room.... He has just sent me down to hear what news there is of the English spies...."
V
No one made reply. It seemed as if some giant and spectral hand had passed over this mass of people and with its magic touch had stilled their turbulent passions, silenced their imprecations and cooled their ardour—and left naught but a vague fear, a subtle sense of awe as when something unexplainable and supernatural has manifested itself before the eyes of men.
From far away the roll of coach wheels rapidly disappearing in the distance alone broke the silence of the night.
"Is there no one here who will explain what all this means?" queried young Lalouët, who alone had remained self-assured and calm, for he alone knew nothing of what had happened. "Citizen Fleury, are you there?"
Then as once again he received no reply, he added peremptorily:
"Hey! some one there! Are you all louts and oafs that not one of you can speak?"
A timid voice from the rear ventured on explanation.
"The citizen proconsul was here a moment ago.... We all saw him, and you citizen Lalouët were with him...."
An imprecation from young Lalouët silenced the timid[326] voice for the nonce ... and then another resumed the halting narrative.
"We all could have sworn that we saw you, citizen Lalouët, also the citizen proconsul.... He got into his coach with you ... you ... that is ... they have driven off...."
"This is some awful and treacherous hoax," cried the youngster now in a towering passion; "the citizen proconsul is upstairs in bed, I tell you ... and I have only just come out of the hotel ...! Name of a name of a dog! am I standing here or am I not?"
Then suddenly he bethought himself of the many events of the day which had culminated in this gigantic feat of leger-de-main.
"Chauvelin!" he exclaimed. "Where in the name of h——ll is citizen Chauvelin?"
But Chauvelin for the moment could nowhere be found. Dazed, half-unconscious, wholly distraught, he had fled from the scene of his discomfiture as fast as his trembling knees would allow. Carrier searched the city for him high and low, and for days afterwards the soldiers of the Compagnie Marat gave aristos and rebels a rest: they were on the look-out for a small, wizened figure of a man—the man with the pale, keen eyes who had failed to recognise in the pseudo-Paul Friche, in the dirty, out-at-elbows sans-culotte—the most exquisite dandy that had ever graced the salons of Bath and of London: they were searching for the man with the acute and sensitive brain who had failed to scent in the pseudo-Carrier and the pseudo-Lalouët his old and arch enemy Sir Percy Blakeney and the charming wife of my lord Anthony Dewhurst.
* * *
[327]
CHAPTER X
LORD TONY
I
A quarter of an hour later citizen-commandant Fleury was at last ushered into the presence of the proconsul and received upon his truly innocent head the full torrent of the despot's wrath. But Martin-Roget had listened to the counsels of prudence: for obvious reasons he desired to avoid any personal contact for the moment with Carrier, whom fear of the English spies had made into a more abject and more craven tyrant than ever before. At the same time he thought it wisest to try and pacify the brute by sending him the ten thousand francs—the bribe agreed upon for his help in the undertaking which had culminated in such a disastrous failure.
At the self-same hour whilst Carrier—fuming and swearing—was for the hundredth time uttering that furious "How?" which for the hundredth time had remained unanswered, two men were taking leave of one another at the small postern gate which gives on the cemetery of St. Anne. The taller and younger one of the two had just dropped a heavy purse into the hand of the other. The latter stooped and kissed the kindly hand.
"Milor," he said, "I swear to you most solemnly that M. le duc de Kernogan will rest in peace in hallowed ground. M. le curé de Vertou—ah! he is a saint and a brave man, milor—comes over whenever he can prudently do so and[328] reads the offices for the dead—over those who have died as Christians, and there is a piece of consecrated ground out here in the open which those fiends of Terrorists have not discovered yet."
"And you will bury M. le duc immediately," admonished the younger man, "and apprise M. le curé of what has happened."
"Aye! aye! I'll do that, milor, within the hour. Though M. le duc was never a very kind master to me in the past, I cannot forget that I served him and his family for over thirty years as coachman. I drove Mlle. Yvonne in the first pony-cart she ever possessed. I drove her—ah! that was a bitter day!—her and M. le duc when they left Kernogan never to return. I drove Mlle. Yvonne on that memorable night when a crowd of miserable peasants attacked her coach, and that brute Pierre Adet started to lead a rabble against the château. That was the beginning of things, milor. God alone knows what has happened to Pierre Adet. His father Jean was hanged by order of M. le duc. Now M. le duc is destined to lie in a forgotten grave. I serve this abominable Republic by digging graves for her victims. I would be happier, I think, if I knew what had become of Mlle. Yvonne."
"Mlle. Yvonne is my wife, old friend," said the younger man softly. "Please God she has years of happiness before her, if I succeed in making her forget all that she has suffered."
"Amen to that, milor!" rejoined the man fervently. "Then I pray you tell the noble lady to rest assured. Jean-Marie—her old coachman whom she used to trust implicitly in the past—will see that M. le duc de Kernogan is buried as a gentleman and a Christian should be."[329]
"You are not running too great a risk by this, I hope, my good Jean-
Marie," quoth Lord Tony gently.
"No greater risk, milor," replied Jean-Marie earnestly, "than the one which you ran by carrying my old master's dead body on your shoulders through the streets of Nantes."
"Bah! that was simple enough," said the younger man, "the hue and cry is after higher quarry to-night. Pray God the hounds have not run the noble game to earth."
Even as he spoke there came from far away through the darkness the sound of a fast trotting pair of horses and the rumble of coach-wheels on the unpaved road.
"There they are, thank God!" exclaimed Lord Tony, and the tremor in his voice alone betrayed the torturing anxiety which he had been enduring, ever since he had seen the last both of his adored young wife and of his gallant chief in the squalid tap-room of the Rat Mort.
With the dead body of Yvonne's father on his back he had quietly worked his way out of the tavern in the wake of his chief. He had his orders, and for the members of that gallant League of the Scarlet Pimpernel there was no such word as "disobedience" and no such word as "fail." Through the darkness and through the tortuous streets of Nantes Lord Anthony Dewhurst—the young and wealthy exquisite, the hero of an hundred fêtes and galas in Bath, in London—staggered under the weight of a burden imposed upon him only by his loyalty and a noble sense of self-prescribed discipline—and that burden the dead body of the man who had done him an unforgivable wrong. Without a thought of revolt he had obeyed—and risked his life and worse in the obedience.
The darkness of the night was his faithful handmaiden, and the excitement of the chase after the other quarry had[330] fortunately drawn every possible enemy from his track. He had set his teeth and accomplished his task, and even the deathly anxiety for the wife whom he idolised had been crushed, under the iron heel of a grim resolve. Now his work was done, and from far away he heard the rattle of the coach wheels which were bringing his beloved nearer and nearer to him.