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

then it shall be starvation in this hole⁠—yes, starvation,” he growled, showing a row of large and uneven teeth like those of some mongrel cur, “for I’ll have that door walled in tonight, and not another living soul shall cross this threshold again until your flesh has rotted on your bones and the rats have had their fill of you.”

The prisoner raised his head slowly, a shiver shook him as if caused by ague, and his eyes, that appeared almost sightless, now looked with a strange glance of horror on his enemy.

“I’ll die in the open,” he whispered, “not in this d⁠⸺⁠d hole.”

“Then tell us where Capet is.”

“I cannot; I wish to God I could. But I’ll take you to him, I swear I will. I’ll make my friends give him up to you. Do you think that I would not tell you now, if I could.”

Héron, whose every instinct of tyranny revolted against this thwarting of his will, would have continued to heckle the prisoner even now, had not Chauvelin suddenly interposed with an authoritative gesture.

“You’ll gain nothing this way, citizen,” he said quietly; “the man’s mind is wandering; he is probably quite unable to give you clear directions at this moment.”

“What am I to do, then?” muttered the other roughly. “He cannot live another twenty-four hours now, and would only grow more and more helpless as time went on.”

“Unless you relax your strict regime with him.”

“And if I do we’ll only prolong this situation indefinitely; and in the meanwhile how do we know that the brat is not being spirited away out of the country?”

The prisoner, with his head once more buried in his arms, had fallen into a kind of torpor, the only kind of sleep that the exhausted system would allow. With a brutal gesture Héron shook him by the shoulder.

“Hé,” he shouted, “none of that, you know. We have not settled the matter of young Capet yet.”

Then, as the prisoner made no movement, and the chief agent indulged in one of his favourite volleys of oaths, Chauvelin placed a peremptory hand on his colleague’s shoulder.

“I tell you, citizen, that this is no use,” he said firmly. “Unless you are prepared to give up all thoughts of finding Capet, you must try and curb your temper, and try diplomacy where force is sure to fail.”

“Diplomacy?” retorted the other with a sneer. “Bah! it served you well at Boulogne last autumn, did it not, citizen Chauvelin?”

“It has served me better now,” rejoined the other imperturbably. “You will own, citizen, that it is my diplomacy which has placed within your reach the ultimate hope of finding Capet.”

“H’m!” muttered the other, “you advised us to starve the prisoner. Are we any nearer to knowing his secret?”

“Yes. By a fortnight of weariness, of exhaustion and of starvation, you are nearer to it by the weakness of the man whom in his full strength you could never hope to conquer.”

“But if the cursed Englishman won’t speak, and in the meanwhile dies on my hands⁠—”

“He won’t do that if you will accede to his wish. Give him some good food now, and let him sleep till dawn.”

“And at dawn he’ll defy me again. I believe now that he has some scheme in his mind, and means to play us a trick.”

“That, I imagine, is more than likely,” retorted Chauvelin dryly; “though,” he added with a contemptuous nod of the head directed at the huddled-up figure of his once brilliant enemy, “neither mind nor body seem to me to be in a sufficiently active state just now for hatching plot or intrigue; but even if⁠—vaguely floating through his clouded mind⁠—there has sprung some little scheme for evasion, I give you my word, citizen Héron, that you can thwart him completely, and gain all that you desire, if you will only follow my advice.”

There had always been a great amount of persuasive power in citizen Chauvelin, ex-envoy of the revolutionary Government of France at the Court of St. James, and that same persuasive eloquence did not fail now in its effect on the chief agent of the Committee of General Security. The latter was made of coarser stuff than his more brilliant colleague. Chauvelin was like a wily and sleek panther that is furtive in its movements, that will lure its prey, watch it, follow it with stealthy footsteps, and only pounce on it when it is least wary, whilst Héron was more like a raging bull that tosses its head in a blind, irresponsible fashion, rushes at an obstacle without gauging its resisting powers, and allows its victim to slip from beneath its weight through the very clumsiness and brutality of its assault.

Still Chauvelin had two heavy black marks against him⁠—those of his failures at Calais and Boulogne. Héron, rendered cautious both by the deadly danger in which he stood and the sense of his own incompetence to deal with the present situation, tried to resist the other’s authority as well as his persuasion.

“Your advice was not of great use to citizen Collot last autumn at Boulogne,” he said, and spat on the ground by way of expressing both his independence and his contempt.

“Still, citizen Héron,” retorted Chauvelin with unruffled patience, “it is the best advice that you are likely to get in the present emergency. You have eyes to see, have you not? Look on your prisoner at this moment. Unless something is done, and at once, too, he will be past negotiating within the next twenty-four hours; then what will follow?”

He put his thin hand once more on his colleague’s grubby coat-sleeve, he drew him closer to himself away from the vicinity of that huddled figure, that captive lion, wrapped in a torpid somnolence that looked already so like the last long sleep.

“What will follow, citizen Héron?” he reiterated, sinking his voice to a whisper; “sooner or later some meddlesome busybody who sits in the Assembly of the Convention will get wind that little Capet is no longer in the