"Here," said Blakeney, thrusting the piece of gold into the thin small palm, "take this home to your mother, and tell your lodger that a big, rough man took the letter away from you by force. Now run, before I kick you out of the way."
The lad, terrified out of his poor wits, did not wait for further commands; he took to his heels and ran, his small hand clutching the piece of gold. Soon he had disappeared round the corner of the street.
Blakeney did not at once read the paper; he thrust it quickly into his breeches pocket and slouched away slowly down the street, and thence across the Place du Carrousel, in the direction of his new lodgings in the Rue de l"Arcade.
It was only when he found himself alone in the narrow, squalid room which he was occupying that he took the sc.r.a.p of paper from his pocket and read it slowly through. It said:
Percy, you cannot forgive me, nor can I ever forgive myself, but if you only knew what I have suffered for the past two days you would, I think, try and forgive. I am free and yet a prisoner; my every footstep is dogged. What they ultimately mean to do with me I do not know. And when I think of Jeanne I long for the power to end mine own miserable existence. Percy! she is still in the hands of those fiends.... I saw the prison register; her name written there has been like a burning brand on my heart ever since. She was still in prison the day that you left Paris; to-morrow, to-night mayhap, they will try her, condemn her, torture her, and I dare not go to see you, for I would only be bringing spies to your door. But will you come to me, Percy? It should be safe in the hours of the night, and the concierge is devoted to me. To-night at ten o"clock she will leave the porte-cochere unlatched. If you find it so, and if on the ledge of the window immediately on your left as you enter you find a candle alight, and beside it a sc.r.a.p of paper with your initials S. P. traced on it, then it will be quite safe for you to come up to my room. It is on the second landing--a door on your right--that too I will leave on the latch. But in the name of the woman you love best in all the world come at once to me then, and bear in mind, Percy, that the woman I love is threatened with immediate death, and that I am powerless to save her. Indeed, believe me, I would gladly die even now but for the thought of Jeanne, whom I should be leaving in the hands of those fiends. For G.o.d"s sake, Percy, remember that Jeanne is all the world to me.
"Poor old Armand," murmured Blakeney with a kindly smile directed at the absent friend, "he won"t trust me even now. He won"t trust his Jeanne in my hands. Well," he added after a while, "after all, I would not entrust Marguerite to anybody else either."
CHAPTER XXIII. THE OVERWHELMING ODDS
At half-past ten that same evening, Blakeney, still clad in a workman"s tattered clothes, his feet bare so that he could tread the streets unheard, turned into the Rue de la Croix Blanche.
The porte-cochere of the house where Armand lodged had been left on the latch; not a soul was in sight. Peering cautiously round, he slipped into the house. On the ledge of the window, immediately on his left when he entered, a candle was left burning, and beside it there was a sc.r.a.p of paper with the initials S. P. roughly traced in pencil. No one challenged him as he noiselessly glided past it, and up the narrow stairs that led to the upper floor. Here, too, on the second landing the door on the right had been left on the latch. He pushed it open and entered.
As is usual even in the meanest lodgings in Paris houses, a small antechamber gave between the front door and the main room. When Percy entered the antechamber was unlighted, but the door into the inner room beyond was ajar. Blakeney approached it with noiseless tread, and gently pushed it open.
That very instant he knew that the game was up; he heard the footsteps closing up behind him, saw Armand, deathly pale, leaning against the wall in the room in front of him, and Chauvelin and Heron standing guard over him.
The next moment the room and the antechamber were literally alive with soldiers--twenty of them to arrest one man.
It was characteristic of that man that when hands were laid on him from every side he threw back his head and laughed--laughed mirthfully, light-heartedly, and the first words that escaped his lips were:
"Well, I am d--d!"
"The odds are against you, Sir Percy," said Chauvelin to him in English, whilst Heron at the further end of the room was growling like a contented beast.
"By the Lord, sir," said Percy with perfect sang-froid, "I do believe that for the moment they are."
"Have done, my men--have done!" he added, turning good-humouredly to the soldiers round him. "I never fight against overwhelming odds. Twenty to one, eh? I could lay four of you out easily enough, perhaps even six, but what then?"
But a kind of savage l.u.s.t seemed to have rendered these men temporarily mad, and they were being egged on by Heron. The mysterious Englishman, about whom so many eerie tales were told! Well, he had supernatural powers, and twenty to one might be nothing to him if the devil was on his side. Therefore a blow on his forearm with the b.u.t.t-end of a bayonet was useful for disabling his right hand, and soon the left arm with a dislocated shoulder hung limp by his side. Then he was bound with cords.
The vein of luck had given out. The gambler had staked more than usual and had lost; but he knew how to lose, just as he had always known how to win.
"Those d--d brutes are trussing me like a fowl," he murmured with irrepressible gaiety at the last.
Then the wrench on his bruised arms as they were pulled roughly back by the cords caused the veil of unconsciousness to gather over his eyes.
"And Jeanne was safe, Armand," he shouted with a last desperate effort; "those devils have lied to you and tricked you into this ... Since yesterday she is out of prison... in the house... you know...."
After that he lost consciousness.
And this occurred on Tuesday, January 21st, in the year 1794, or, in accordance with the new calendar, on the 2nd Pluviose, year II of the Republic.
It is chronicled in the Moniteur of the 3rd Pluviose that, "on the previous evening, at half-past ten of the clock, the Englishman known as the Scarlet Pimpernel, who for three years has conspired against the safety of the Republic, was arrested through the patriotic exertions of citizen Chauvelin, and conveyed to the Conciergerie, where he now lies--sick, but closely guarded. Long live the Republic!"
PART II.
CHAPTER XXIV. THE NEWS
The grey January day was falling, drowsy, and dull into the arms of night.
Marguerite, sitting in the dusk beside the fire in her small boudoir, shivered a little as she drew her scarf closer round her shoulders.
Edwards, the butler, entered with the lamp. The room looked peculiarly cheery now, with the delicate white panelling of the wall glowing under the soft kiss of the flickering firelight and the steadier glow of the rose-shaded lamp.
"Has the courier not arrived yet, Edwards?" asked Marguerite, fixing the impa.s.sive face of the well-drilled servant with her large purple-rimmed eyes.
"Not yet, m"lady," he replied placidly.
"It is his day, is it not?"
"Yes, m"lady. And the forenoon is his time. But there have been heavy rains, and the roads must be rare muddy. He must have been delayed, m"lady."
"Yes, I suppose so," she said listlessly. "That will do, Edwards. No, don"t close the shutters. I"ll ring presently."
The man went out of the room as automatically as he had come. He closed the door behind him, and Marguerite was once more alone.
She picked up the book which she had fingered idly before the light gave out. She tried once more to fix her attention on this tale of love and adventure written by Mr. Fielding; but she had lost the thread of the story, and there was a mist between her eyes and the printed pages.
With an impatient gesture she threw down the book and pa.s.sed her hand across her eyes, then seemed astonished to find that her hand was wet.
She rose and went to the window. The air outside had been singularly mild all day; the thaw was persisting, and a south wind came across the Channel--from France.
Marguerite threw open the cas.e.m.e.nt and sat down on the wide sill, leaning her head against the window-frame, and gazing out into the fast gathering gloom. From far away, at the foot of the gently sloping lawns, the river murmured softly in the night; in the borders to the right and left a few snowdrops still showed like tiny white specks through the surrounding darkness. Winter had begun the process of slowly shedding its mantle, coquetting with Spring, who still lingered in the land of Infinity. Gradually the shadows drew closer and closer; the reeds and rushes on the river bank were the first to sink into their embrace, then the big cedars on the lawn, majestic and defiant, but yielding still unconquered to the power of night.
The tiny stars of snowdrop blossoms vanished one by one, and at last the cool, grey ribbon of the river surface was wrapped under the mantle of evening.
Only the south wind lingered on, soughing gently in the drowsy reeds, whispering among the branches of the cedars, and gently stirring the tender corollas of the sleeping snowdrops.
Marguerite seemed to open out her lungs to its breath. It had come all the way from France, and on its wings had brought something of Percy--a murmur as if he had spoken--a memory that was as intangible as a dream.
She shivered again, though of a truth it was not cold. The courier"s delay had completely unsettled her nerves. Twice a week he came especially from Dover, and always he brought some message, some token which Percy had contrived to send from Paris. They were like tiny sc.r.a.ps of dry bread thrown to a starving woman, but they did just help to keep her heart alive--that poor, aching, disappointed heart that so longed for enduring happiness which it could never get.