Lord Tony’s Wife, Baroness Orczy [bill gates best books TXT] 📗

it and brew mischief there which is no good to me and no good to the Republic.”

“Yes! I know all about the Rat Mort. I found a night’s shelter there four years ago when⁠ ⁠…”

“When the ci-devant duc de Kernogan was busy hanging your father⁠—the miller⁠—for a crime which he never committed. Well then, citizen Martin-Roget,” continued Carrier with one of his hideous leers, “since you know the Rat Mort so well what say you to your fair and stately Yvonne de Kernogan and her father being captured there in the company of the lowest scum of the population of Nantes?”

“You mean⁠ ⁠… ?” murmured Martin-Roget, who had become livid with excitement.

“I mean that my Marats have orders to raid some of the haunts of our Nantese cutthroats, and that they may as well begin tonight and with the Rat Mort. They will make a descent on the house and a thorough perquisition, and every person⁠—man, woman and child⁠—found on the premises will be arrested and sent with a batch of malefactors to Paris, there to be tried as felons and criminals and deported to Cayenne where they will, I trust, rot as convicts in that pestilential climate. Think you,” concluded the odious creature with a sneer, “that when put face to face with the alternative, your Kernogan wench will still refuse to become the wife of a fine patriot like yourself?”

“I don’t know,” murmured Martin-Roget. “I⁠ ⁠… I⁠ ⁠…”

“But I do know,” broke in Carrier roughly, “that ten thousand francs is far too little to pay for so brilliant a realisation of all one’s hopes. Ten thousand francs? ’Tis an hundred thousand you should give to show your gratitude.”

Martin-Roget rose and stretched his large, heavy figure to its full height. He was at great pains to conceal the utter contempt which he felt for the abominable wretch before whom he was forced to cringe.

“You shall have ten thousand francs, citizen Carrier,” he said slowly; “it is all that I possess in the world now⁠—the last remaining fragment of a sum of twenty-five thousand francs which I earned and scraped together for the past four years. You have had five thousand francs already. And you shall have the other ten. I do not grudge it. If twenty years of my life were any use to you, I would give you that, in exchange for the help you are giving me in what means far more than life to me.”

The proconsul laughed and shrugged his shoulders⁠—of a truth he thought citizen Martin-Roget an awful fool.

“Very well then,” he said, “we will call the matter settled. I confess that it amuses me, although remember that I have warned you. With all these aristos, I believe in the potency of my barges rather than in your elaborate schemes. Still! it shall never be said that Jean Baptiste Carrier has left a friend in the lurch.”

“I am grateful for your help, citizen Carrier,” said Martin-Roget coldly. Then he added slowly, as if reviewing the situation in his own mind: “Tonight, you say?”

“Yes. Tonight. My Marats under the command of citizen Fleury will make a descent upon the Rat Mort. Those shall be my orders. The place will be swept clean of every man, woman and child who is inside. If your two Kernogans are there⁠ ⁠… well!” he said with a cynical laugh and a shrug of his shoulders, “they can be sent up to Paris with the rest of the herd.”

“The dinner bell has gone long ago,” here interposed young Lalouët drily, “the soup will be stone-cold and the chef red-hot with anger.”

“You are right, citizen Lalouët,” said Carrier as he leaned back in his chair once more and stretched out his long legs at his ease. “We have wasted far too much time already over the affairs of a couple of aristos, who ought to have been at the bottom of the Loire a week ago. The audience is ended,” he added airily, and he made a gesture of overweening condescension, for all the world like the one wherewith the Grand Monarque was wont to dismiss his courtiers.

Chauvelin rose too and quietly turned to the door. He had not spoken a word for the past half-hour, ever since in fact he had put in a conciliatory word on behalf of his impetuous colleague. Whether he had taken an active interest in the conversation or not it were impossible to say. But now, just as he was ready to go, and young Lalouët prepared to close the doors of the audience chamber, something seemed suddenly to occur to him and he called somewhat peremptorily to the young man.

“One moment, citizen,” he said.

“What is it now?” queried the youth insolently, and from his fine eyes there shot a glance of contempt on the meagre figure of the once powerful Terrorist.

“About the Kernogan wench,” continued Chauvelin. “She will have to be conveyed some time before night to the tavern next door. There may be agencies at work on her behalf⁠ ⁠…”

“Agencies?” broke in the boy gruffly. “What agencies?”

“Oh!” said Chauvelin vaguely, “we all know that aristos have powerful friends these days. It will not be over safe to take the girl across after dark from one house to another⁠ ⁠… the alley is badly lighted: the wench will not go willingly. She might scream and create a disturbance and draw⁠ ⁠… er⁠ ⁠… those same unknown agencies to her rescue. I think a body of Marats should be told off to convey her to the Rat Mort.⁠ ⁠…”

Young Lalouët shrugged his shoulders.

“That’s your affair,” he said curtly. “Eh, Carrier?” And he glanced over his shoulder at the proconsul, who at once assented.

Martin-Roget⁠—struck by his colleague’s argument⁠—would have interposed, but Carrier broke in with one of his uncontrolled outbursts of fury.

“Ah ça,” he exclaimed, “enough of this now. Citizen Lalouët is right and I have done enough for you already. If you want the Kernogan wench to be at the Rat Mort, you must see to getting her there yourself. She is next door, what? I won’t