El Dorado, Baroness Orczy [read the beginning after the end novel .TXT] 📗

at the same breathless speed.

The next moment he was challenged:

“Qui va là?”

“A friend!” he replied, panting and exhausted. “Where is citizen Héron?”

“Here!” came the reply in a voice hoarse with passionate excitement. “Come up, damn you. Be quick!”

“A lantern, citizen,” suggested one of the drivers.

“No⁠—no⁠—not now. Here! Where the devil are we?”

“We are close to the chapel on our left, citizen,” said the sergeant.

The runner, whose eyes were no doubt accustomed to the gloom, had drawn nearer to the carriage.

“The gates of the château,” he said, still somewhat breathlessly, “are just opposite here on the right, citizen. I have just come through them.”

“Speak up, man!” and Héron’s voice now sounded as if choked with passion. “Citizen Chauvelin sent you?”

“Yes. He bade me tell you that he has gained access to the château, and that Capet is not there.”

A series of citizen Héron’s choicest oaths interrupted the man’s speech. Then he was curtly ordered to proceed, and he resumed his report.

“Citizen Chauvelin rang at the door of the château; after a while he was admitted by an old servant, who appeared to be in charge, but the place seemed otherwise absolutely deserted⁠—only⁠—”

“Only what? Go on; what is it?”

“As we rode through the park it seemed to us as if we were being watched, and followed. We heard distinctly the sound of horses behind and around us, but we could see nothing; and now, when I ran back, again I heard. There are others in the park tonight besides us, citizen.”

There was silence after that. It seemed as if the flood of Héron’s blasphemous eloquence had spent itself at last.

“Others in the park!” And now his voice was scarcely above a whisper, hoarse and trembling. “How many? Could you see?”

“No, citizen, we could not see; but there are horsemen lurking round the château now. Citizen Chauvelin took four men into the house with him and left the others on guard outside. He bade me tell you that it might be safer to send him a few more men if you could spare them. There are a number of disused farm buildings quite close to the gates, and he suggested that all the horses be put up there for the night, and that the men come up to the château on foot; it would be quicker and safer, for the darkness is intense.”

Even while the man spoke the forest in the distance seemed to wake from its solemn silence, the wind on its wings brought sounds of life and movement different from the prowling of beasts or the screeching of night-birds. It was the furtive advance of men, the quick whispers of command, of encouragement, of the human animal preparing to attack his kind. But all in the distance still, all muffled, all furtive as yet.

“Sergeant!” It was Héron’s voice, but it too was subdued, and almost calm now; “can you see the chapel?”

“More clearly, citizen,” replied the sergeant. “It is on our left; quite a small building, I think.”

“Then dismount, and walk all round it. See that there are no windows or door in the rear.”

There was a prolonged silence, during which those distant sounds of men moving, of furtive preparations for attack, struck distinctly through the night.

Marguerite and Armand, clinging to one another, not knowing what to think, nor yet what to fear, heard the sounds mingling with those immediately round them, and Marguerite murmured under her breath:

“It is de Batz and some of his friends; but what can they do? What can Percy hope for now?”

But of Percy she could hear and see nothing. The darkness and the silence had drawn their impenetrable veil between his unseen presence and her own consciousness. She could see the coach in which he was, but Héron’s hideous personality, his head with its battered hat and soiled bandage, had seemed to obtrude itself always before her gaze, blotting out from her mind even the knowledge that Percy was there not fifty yards away from her.

So strong did this feeling grow in her that presently the awful dread seized upon her that he was no longer there; that he was dead, worn out with fatigue and illness brought on by terrible privations, or if not dead that he had swooned, that he was unconscious⁠—his spirit absent from his body. She remembered that frightful yell of rage and hate which Héron had uttered a few minutes ago. Had the brute vented his fury on his helpless, weakened prisoner, and stilled forever those lips that, mayhap, had mocked him to the last?

Marguerite could not guess. She hardly knew what to hope. Vaguely, when the thought of Percy lying dead beside his enemy floated through her aching brain, she was almost conscious of a sense of relief at the thought that at least he would be spared the pain of the final, inevitable cataclysm.

XLVII The Chapel of the Holy Sepulchre

The sergeant’s voice broke in upon her misery.

The man had apparently done as the citizen agent had ordered, and had closely examined the little building that stood on the left⁠—a vague, black mass more dense than the surrounding gloom.

“It is all solid stone, citizen,” he said; “iron gates in front, closed but not locked, rusty key in the lock, which turns quite easily; no windows or door in the rear.”

“You are quite sure?”

“Quite certain, citizen; it is plain, solid stone at the back, and the only possible access to the interior is through the iron gate in front.”

“Good.”

Marguerite could only just hear Héron speaking to the sergeant. Darkness enveloped every form and deadened every sound. Even the harsh voice which she had learned to loathe and to dread sounded curiously subdued and unfamiliar. Héron no longer seemed inclined to storm, to rage, or to curse. The momentary danger, the thought of failure, the hope of revenge, had apparently cooled his temper, strengthened his determination, and forced his voice down to a little above a whisper. He gave his orders clearly and firmly, and the words