“It might have been better for you, if you had,” the man in the centre remarked dryly.
Godet’s wan face took on a more ashen hue; again he passed his tongue over his parched lips.
“Haven’t we had enough of this?” one of the others at the table now put in impatiently. “We are satisfied that those English spies, or whatever they were, acted with amazing effrontery, which makes me think that perhaps they are a part of that gang that we all know of, and of which Citizen Chauvelin spoke just now. We are also satisfied that Citizen Lieutenant Godet did not show that acumen which an officer in his responsible position should have done. What we want to know now is, what happened after the pseudo-captain of the so-called 33rd division had arrested that young Colombe and marched out of Laragne?”
“And in your interest, citizen lieutenant,” the man in the centre rejoined sternly, “I advise you to make a statement that is truthful in every detail.”
“Had I wished to tell lies,” the soldier retorted sullenly, “I shouldn’t be here now. I should have—”
“No matter,” the other broke in curtly, “what you would have done. The State desires to know what you did.”
“Well!” Lieutenant Godet began after a moment or two during which he appeared to collect his thoughts. “We marched out of Laragne in the direction of Serres. The captain—I still, of course, looked upon him as a captain—had so disposed us that I and my own men were between two squads of his. We were footsore, all of us, because we had had three days’ tramping in the dust, one day battling against hard wind, another with long hours spent in scouring the château of those traitors Frontenacs; we were also very hungry. Remember that we had been dragged out of our beds in the early morning, and not given a chance of getting a bite or drink before starting on the march. But they, the others, were fresh as if they had just come out of barracks with their bellies full. … They marched along at a swinging pace, and it was as much as we could do to keep step with them.”
The man’s voice became somewhat more steady as he talked. The note of terror which had been so conspicuous in it at first had given place to one of dull resentment. Encouraged by the obvious interest which his story had evoked in his hearers, he resumed more glibly:
“About half a league north of Laragne, a bridle-path branches off the high road; into this the captain ordered his company to turn, and we continued to plod along through the dust and in the midday heat, till we came to a tumble-down cottage by the roadside; a cottage flanked by a dilapidated shed, and a bit of garden all overgrown with weeds. Here a halt was called, and the prisoners were ordered out of the wagon. A moment or two later a woman appeared at the cottage door, some words were exchanged between her and the captain, and subsequently, when order to march was given, the prisoners marched along with us; the wagon and horses having been left behind at the cottage.”
“Didn’t you think this very strange, citizen lieutenant?” one of the men at the table asked; “a wagon and horses which you would naturally presume belonged to the State, being thus left at a tumble-down roadside cottage?”
“Whatever I may have thought,” the lieutenant replied, “it was not my place to make observations to my superior officer.”
“Superior officer!” the man in the centre remarked, with a gesture of contemptuous wrath.
“I think, Citizen Chauvelin,” the accused now put in a little more firmly, “that you are unnecessarily hard on me. There was really nothing to indicate—”
But the other broke in with a vicious snarl:
“Nothing to indicate—? Nothing? The eyes of a patriot should be sharp enough to detect a spy or a traitor through any disguise—”
He paused abruptly, and cast a quick, inquisitorial glance at his two colleagues first, then at the soldier before him. Had he detected a trace, a sign, a flicker of the eyelid that betrayed knowledge of his own past? of the times—numberless now—that he too had been hoodwinked by those bold adventurers who called themselves the League of the Scarlet Pimpernel, and by their chief whose prowess in the art of disguise had marked some of the most humiliating hours in Chauvelin’s career? Calais, Boulogne, Nantes, Paris; each of those great cities had a record of the Terrorist’s discomfiture when brought face to face with that mysterious and elusive Scarlet Pimpernel. Even, now crushed in the hot palm of his hand, he held a scrap of paper which had revealed the author of the plot to which that fool Lieutenant Godet had fallen a victim—just as he, himself, Chauvelin, had done—just like that—and so many times—. The penalty for him had always been more humiliation, a further fall from the original high place which he had once occupied in Paris: and with it the knowledge that one day the masters of France would tire of his failures. Ah! he knew that well enough, he knew that they would tire, and then they would crush him as they had crushed others, whose only crime, like his, had been failure.
His only claim to immunity, so far, had been the fact that he alone, of all the members of the National Assembly, of all the members of Committees, or of the Executive, knew who the Scarlet Pimpernel really was; he had seen him without disguise; he knew him by name, not only him but some of his more important followers; and when some of the ferocious tyrants, who for the time being were the masters of France, did at times loudly demand the suppression of Citizen Chauvelin, for incompetence that amounted to treason, there were always others who pleaded for him
