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 a.s.set 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 amus.e.m.e.nt lurking in his shrewd, pale eyes, Chauvelin handed the momentous doc.u.ment 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 doc.u.ment 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."
CHAPTER XXI. BACK TO PARIS
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 bl.u.s.tering wind and diving 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 ca.n.a.l 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 ca.n.a.l.
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.