Chauvelin listened to all these explanations with some impatience. The child was nothing to him, but the Scarlet Pimpernel had desired to rescue it from out of the clutches of the Leridans; had risked his all—and lost it—in order to effect that rescue! That in itself was a sufficient inducement for Chauvelin to interest himself in the execution of Marat’s vengeance, whatever its original mainspring may have been.
At any rate, now he felt satisfied that the child was safe, and that the Leridans were impervious to threats or bribes which might land them on the guillotine.
All that they would own to was to being afraid.
“Afraid of what?” queried Chauvelin sharply.
That the brat may be kidnapped … stolen. Oh! he could not be decoyed … they were too watchful for that! But apparently there were mysterious agencies at work. …
“Mysterious agencies!” Chauvelin laughed aloud at the suggestion. The “mysterious agency” was even now rotting in an obscure cell at the Abbaye. What other powers could be at work on behalf of the brat?
Well, the Leridans had had a warning!
What warning?
“A letter,” the man said gruffly. “But as neither my wife nor I can read—”
“Why did you not speak of this before?” broke in Chauvelin roughly. “Let me see the letter.”
The woman produced a soiled and dank scrap of paper from beneath her apron. Of a truth she could not read its contents, for they were writ in English in the form of a doggerel rhyme which caused Chauvelin to utter a savage oath.
“When did this come?” he asked. “And how?”
“This morning, citizen,” the woman mumbled in reply. “I found it outside the door, with a stone on it to prevent the wind from blowing it away. What does it mean, citizen?” she went on, her voice shaking with terror, for of a truth the citizen Representative looked as if he had seen some weird and unearthly apparition.
He gave no reply for a moment or two, and the two catiffs had no conception of the tremendous effort at self-control which was hidden behind the pale, rigid mask of the redoubtable man.
“It probably means nothing that you need fear,” Chauvelin said quietly at last. “But I will see the Commissary of the Section myself, and tell him to send a dozen men of the Sûreté along to watch your house and be at your beck and call if need be. Then you will feel quite safe, I hope.”
“Oh, yes! quite safe, citizen!” the woman replied with a sigh of genuine relief. Then only did Chauvelin turn on his heel and go his way.
IX
But that crumpled and soiled scrap of paper given to him by the woman Leridan still lay in his clenched hand as he strode back rapidly citywards. It seemed to scorch his palm. Even before he had glanced at the contents he knew what they were. That atrocious English doggerel, the signature—a five-petalled flower traced in crimson! How well he knew them!
“We seek him here, we seek him there!”
The most humiliating moments in Chauvelin’s career were associated with that silly rhyme, and now here it was, mocking him even when he knew that his bitter enemy lay fettered and helpless, caught in a trap, out of which there was no escape possible; even though he knew for a positive certainty that the mocking voice which had spoken those rhymes on that far-off day last September would soon be stilled forever.
No doubt one of that army of abominable English spies had placed this warning outside the Leridans’ door. No doubt they had done that with a view to throwing dust in the eyes of the Public Prosecutor and causing a confusion in his mind with regard to the identity of the prisoner at the Abbaye, all to the advantage of their chief.
The thought that such a confusion might exist, that Fouquier-Tinville might be deluded into doubting the real personality of Paul Molé, brought an icy sweat all down Chauvelin’s spine. He hurried along the interminably long Chemin de Pantin, only paused at the Barrière du Combat in order to interview the Commissary of the Section on the matter of sending men to watch over the Leridans’ house. Then, when he felt satisfied that this would be effectively and quickly done, an unconquerable feeling of restlessness prompted him to hurry round to the lodgings of the Public Prosecutor in the Rue Blanche—just to see him, to speak with him, to make quite sure.
Oh! he must be sure that no doubts, no pusillanimity on the part of any official would be allowed to stand in the way of the consummation of all his most cherished dreams. Papers or no papers, testimony or no testimony, the incarcerated Paul Molé was the Scarlet Pimpernel—of this Chauvelin was as certain as that he was alive. His every sense had testified to it when he stood in the narrow room of the Rue des Cordeliers, face to face—eyes gazing into eyes—with his sworn enemy.
Unluckily, however, he found the Public Prosecutor in a surly and obstinate mood, following on an interview which he had just had with citizen Commissary Cuisinier on the matter of the prisoner Paul Molé.
“His papers are all in order, I tell you,” he said impatiently, in answer to Chauvelin’s insistence. “It is as much as my head is worth to demand a summary execution.”
“But I tell you that, those papers of his are forged,” urged Chauvelin forcefully.
“They are not,” retorted the other. “The Commissary swears to his own signature on the identity book. The concierge at the Abbaye swears that he knows Molé, so do all
