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

and on the watch. Try the door of your prison every evening at one hour before midnight. Once you will find it yield. Slip out and creep noiselessly down the stairs. At the bottom a friendly hand will be stretched out to you. Take it with confidence⁠—it will lead you to safety and to freedom. Courage and secrecy.’ ”

Lalouët had been looking over his shoulder while he read: now he pointed to the bottom of the letter.

“And there is the device,” he said, “we have heard so much about of late⁠—a five-petalled flower drawn in red ink⁠ ⁠… the Scarlet Pimpernel, I presume.”

“Aye! the Scarlet Pimpernel,” murmured Chauvelin, “as you say! Braggadocio on his part or accident, his letters are certainly in our hands now and will prove⁠—must prove, the tool whereby we can be even with him once and for all.”

“And you, citizen Chauvelin,” interposed Carrier with a sneer, “are mighty lucky to have me to help you this time. I am not going to be fooled, as Candeille and you were fooled last September, as you were fooled in Calais and Héron in Paris. I shall be seeing this time to the capture of those English adventurers.”

“And that capture should not be difficult,” added Lalouët with a complacent laugh. “Your famous adventurer’s luck hath deserted him this time: an all-powerful proconsul is pitted against him and the loss of his papers hath destroyed the anonymity on which he reckons.”

Chauvelin paid no heed to the fatuous remarks.

How little did this flippant young braggart and this coarse-grained bully understand the subtle workings of that same adventurer’s brain! He himself⁠—one of the most astute men of the day⁠—found it difficult. Even now⁠—the losing of those letters in the open streets of Nantes⁠—it was part of a plan. Chauvelin could have staked his head on that⁠—a part of a plan for the liberation of Lady Anthony Dewhurst⁠—but what plan?⁠—what plan?

He took up the letter which his colleague had thrown down: he fingered it, handled it, letting the paper crackle through his fingers, as if he expected it to yield up the secret which it contained. The time had come⁠—of that he felt no doubt⁠—when he could at last be even with his enemy. He had endured more bitter humiliation at the hands of this elusive Pimpernel than he would have thought himself capable of bearing a couple of years ago. But the time had come at last⁠—if only he kept his every faculty on the alert, if Fate helped him and his own nerves stood the strain. Above all if this blundering, self-satisfied Carrier could be reckoned on!⁠ ⁠…

There lay the one great source of trouble! He⁠—Chauvelin⁠—had no power: he was disgraced⁠—a failure⁠—a nonentity to be sneered at. He might protest, entreat, wring his hands, weep tears of blood and not one man would stir a finger to help him: this brute who sprawled here across his desk would not lend him half a dozen men to enable him to lay by the heels the most powerful enemy the Government of the Terror had ever known. Chauvelin inwardly ground his teeth with rage at his own impotence, at his own dependence on this clumsy lout, who was at this moment possessed of powers which he himself would give half his life to obtain.

But on the other hand he did possess a power which no one could take from him⁠—the power to use others for the furtherance of his own aims⁠—to efface himself while others danced as puppets to his piping. Carrier had the power: he had spies, Marats, prison-guards at his disposal. He was greedy for the reward, and cupidity and fear would make of him a willing instrument. All that Chauvelin need do was to use that instrument for his own ends. One would be the head to direct, the other⁠—a mere insentient tool.

From this moment onwards every minute, every second and every fraction of a second would be full of portent, full of possibilities. Sir Percy Blakeney was in Nantes with at least three or four members of his League: he was at this very moment taxing every fibre of his resourceful brain in order to devise a means whereby he could rescue his friend’s wife from the fate which was awaiting her: to gain this end he would dare everything, risk everything⁠—risk and dare a great deal more than he had ever dared and risked before.

Chauvelin was finding a grim pleasure in reviewing the situation, in envisaging the danger of failure which he knew lay in wait for him, unless he too was able to call to his aid all the astuteness, all the daring, all the resource of his own fertile brain. He studied his colleague’s face keenly⁠—that sullen, savage expression in it, the arrogance, the blundering vanity. It was terrible to have to humour and fawn to a creature of that stamp when all one’s hopes, all one’s future, one’s ideals and the welfare of one’s country were at stake.

But this additional difficulty only served to whet the man’s appetite for action. He drew in a long breath of delight, like a captive who first after many days and months of weary anguish scents freedom and ozone. He straightened out his shoulders. A gleam of triumph and of hope shot out of his keen pale eyes. He studied Carrier and he studied Lalouët and he felt that he could master them both⁠—quietly, diplomatically, with subtle skill that would not alarm the proconsul’s rampant self-esteem: and whilst this coarse-fibred brute gloated in anticipatory pleasure over the handling of a few thousand francs, and whilst Martin-Roget dreamed of a clumsy revenge against one woman and one man who had wronged him four years ago, he⁠—Chauvelin⁠—would pursue his work of striking at the enemy of the Revolution⁠—of bringing to his knees the man who spent life and fortune in combating its ideals and in frustrating its aims. The destruction of such a foe was worthy a patriot’s ambition.

On the other hand some of