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

patriot⁠—aye! to make of him such a one that even if you and your cursed confederates got him by some hellish chance, he would be no use to you as a king, a tyrant to set above the people, to set up in your Versailles, your Louvre, to eat off golden plates and wear satin clothes. You have seen the brat! By the time he is a man he should forget how to eat save with his fingers, and get roaring drunk every night. That’s what we want!⁠—to make him so that he shall be no use to you, even if you did get him away; but you shall not! You shall not, not if I have to strangle him with my own hands.”

He picked up his short-stemmed pipe and pulled savagely at it for awhile. De Batz was meditating.

“My friend,” he said after a little while, “you are agitating yourself quite unnecessarily, and gravely jeopardising your prospects of getting a comfortable little income through keeping your fingers off my person. Who said I wanted to meddle with the child?”

“You had best not,” growled Héron.

“Exactly. You have said that before. But do you not think that you would be far wiser, instead of directing your undivided attention to my unworthy self, to turn your thoughts a little to one whom, believe me, you have far greater cause to fear?”

“Who is that?”

“The Englishman.”

“You mean the man they call the Scarlet Pimpernel?”

“Himself. Have you not suffered from his activity, friend Héron? I fancy that citizen Chauvelin and citizen Collot would have quite a tale to tell about him.”

“They ought both to have been guillotined for that blunder last autumn at Boulogne.”

“Take care that the same accusation be not laid at your door this year, my friend,” commented de Batz placidly.

“Bah!”

“The Scarlet Pimpernel is in Paris even now.”

“The devil he is!”

“And on what errand, think you?”

There was a moment’s silence, and then de Batz continued with slow and dramatic emphasis:

“That of rescuing your most precious prisoner from the Temple.”

“How do you know?” Héron queried savagely.

“I guessed.”

“How?”

“I saw a man in the Théâtre National today⁠ ⁠…”

“Well?”

“Who is a member of the League of the Scarlet Pimpernel.”

“D⁠⸺ him! Where can I find him?”

“Will you sign a receipt for the three thousand five hundred livres, which I am pining to hand over to you, my friend, and I will tell you?”

“Where’s the money?”

“In my pocket.”

Without further words Héron dragged the inkhorn and a sheet of paper towards him, took up a pen, and wrote a few words rapidly in a loose, scrawly hand. He strewed sand over the writing, then handed it across the table to de Batz.

“Will that do?” he asked briefly.

The other was reading the note through carefully.

“I see you only grant me a fortnight,” he remarked casually.

“For that amount of money it is sufficient. If you want an extension you must pay more.”

“So be it,” assented de Batz coolly, as he folded the paper across. “On the whole a fortnight’s immunity in France these days is quite a pleasant respite. And I prefer to keep in touch with you, friend Héron. I’ll call on you again this day fortnight.”

He took out a letter-case from his pocket. Out of this he drew a packet of banknotes, which he laid on the table in front of Héron, then he placed the receipt carefully into the letter-case, and this back into his pocket.

Héron in the meanwhile was counting over the banknotes. The light of ferocity had entirely gone from his eyes; momentarily the whole expression of the face was one of satisfied greed.

“Well!” he said at last when he had assured himself that the number of notes was quite correct, and he had transferred the bundle of crisp papers into an inner pocket of his coat⁠—“well, what about your friend?”

“I knew him years ago,” rejoined de Batz coolly; “he is a kinsman of citizen St. Just. I know that he is one of the confederates of the Scarlet Pimpernel.”

“Where does he lodge?”

“That is for you to find out. I saw him at the theatre, and afterwards in the greenroom; he was making himself agreeable to the citizeness Lange. I heard him ask for leave to call on her tomorrow at four o’clock. You know where she lodges, of course!”

He watched Héron while the latter scribbled a few words on a scrap of paper, then he quietly rose to go. He took up his cloak and once again wrapped it round his shoulders. There was nothing more to be said, and he was anxious to go.

The leave-taking between the two men was neither cordial nor more than barely courteous. De Batz nodded to Héron, who escorted him to the outside door of his lodging, and there called loudly to a soldier who was doing sentinel at the further end of the corridor.

“Show this citizen the way to the guichet,” he said curtly. “Good night, citizen,” he added finally, nodding to de Batz.

Ten minutes later the Gascon once more found himself in the Rue du Temple between the great outer walls of the prison and the silent little church and convent of St. Elizabeth. He looked up to where in the central tower a small grated window lighted from within showed the place where the last of the Bourbons was being taught to desecrate the traditions of his race, at the bidding of a mender of shoes⁠—a naval officer cashiered for misconduct and fraud.

Such is human nature in its self-satisfied complacency that de Batz, calmly ignoring the vile part which he himself had played in the last quarter of an hour of his interview with the Committee’s agent, found it in him to think of Héron with loathing, and even of the cobbler Simon with disgust.

Then with a self-righteous sense of duty performed, and an indifferent shrug of the shoulders, he dismissed Héron from his mind.

“That meddlesome Scarlet Pimpernel will find his hands overfull tomorrow, and mayhap will not interfere in my affairs for some time to come,” he mused; “meseems