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

Temple prison, that a pauper child was substituted for him, and that you, citizen Héron, together with the commissaries in charge, have thus been fooling the nation and its representatives for over a fortnight. What will follow then, think you?”

And he made an expressive gesture with his outstretched fingers across his throat.

Héron found no other answer but blasphemy.

“I’ll make that cursed Englishman speak yet,” he said with a fierce oath.

“You cannot,” retorted Chauvelin decisively. “In his present state he is incapable of it, even if he would, which also is doubtful.”

“Ah! then you do think that he still means to cheat us?”

“Yes, I do. But I also know that he is no longer in a physical state to do it. No doubt he thinks that he is. A man of that type is sure to overvalue his own strength; but look at him, citizen Héron. Surely you must see that we have nothing to fear from him now.”

Héron now was like a voracious creature that has two victims lying ready for his gluttonous jaws. He was loath to let either of them go. He hated the very thought of seeing the Englishman being led out of this narrow cell, where he had kept a watchful eye over him night and day for a fortnight, satisfied that with every day, every hour, the chances of escape became more improbable and more rare; at the same time there was the possibility of the recapture of little Capet, a possibility which made Héron’s brain reel with the delightful vista of it, and which might never come about if the prisoner remained silent to the end.

“I wish I were quite sure,” he said sullenly, “that you were body and soul in accord with me.”

“I am in accord with you, citizen Héron,” rejoined the other earnestly⁠—“body and soul in accord with you. Do you not believe that I hate this man⁠—aye! hate him with a hatred ten thousand times more strong than yours? I want his death⁠—Heaven or hell alone know how I long for that⁠—but what I long for most is his lasting disgrace. For that I have worked, citizen Héron⁠—for that I advised and helped you. When first you captured this man you wanted summarily to try him, to send him to the guillotine amidst the joy of the populace of Paris, and crowned with a splendid halo of martyrdom. That man, citizen Héron, would have baffled you, mocked you, and fooled you even on the steps of the scaffold. In the zenith of his strength and of insurmountable good luck you and all your myrmidons and all the assembled guard of Paris would have had no power over him. The day that you led him out of this cell in order to take him to trial or to the guillotine would have been that of your hopeless discomfiture. Having once walked out of this cell hale, hearty and alert, be the escort round him ever so strong, he never would have re-entered it again. Of that I am as convinced as that I am alive. I know the man; you don’t. Mine are not the only fingers through which he has slipped. Ask citizen Collot d’Herbois, ask Sergeant Bibot at the barrier of Menilmontant, ask General Santerre and his guards. They all have a tale to tell. Did I believe in God or the devil, I should also believe that this man has supernatural powers and a host of demons at his beck and call.”

“Yet you talk now of letting him walk out of this cell tomorrow?”

“He is a different man now, citizen Héron. On my advice you placed him on a regime that has counteracted the supernatural power by simple physical exhaustion, and driven to the four winds the host of demons who no doubt fled in the face of starvation.”

“If only I thought that the recapture of Capet was as vital to you as it is to me,” said Héron, still unconvinced.

“The capture of Capet is just as vital to me as it is to you,” rejoined Chauvelin earnestly, “if it is brought about through the instrumentality of the Englishman.”

He paused, looking intently on his colleague, whose shifty eyes encountered his own. Thus eye to eye the two men at last understood one another.

“Ah!” said Héron with a snort, “I think I understand.”

“I am sure that you do,” responded Chauvelin dryly. “The disgrace of this cursed Scarlet Pimpernel and his League is as vital to me, and more, as the capture of Capet is to you. That is why I showed you the way how to bring that meddlesome adventurer to his knees; that is why I will help you now both to find Capet and with his aid and to wreak what reprisals you like on him in the end.”

Héron before he spoke again cast one more look on the prisoner. The latter had not stirred; his face was hidden, but the hands, emaciated, nerveless and waxen, like those of the dead, told a more eloquent tale, mayhap, then than the eyes could do. The chief agent of the Committee of General Security walked deliberately round the table until he stood once more close beside the man from whom he longed with passionate ardour to wrest an all-important secret. With brutal, grimy hand he raised the head that lay, sunken and inert, against the table; with callous eyes he gazed attentively on the face that was then revealed to him, he looked on the waxen flesh, the hollow eyes, the bloodless lips; then he shrugged his wide shoulders, and with a laugh that surely must have caused joy in hell, he allowed the wearied head to fall back against the outstretched arms, and turned once again to his colleague.

“I think you are right, citizen Chauvelin,” he said; “there is not much supernatural power here. Let me hear your advice.”

XXXVII Chauvelin’s Advice

Citizen Chauvelin had drawn his colleague with him to the end of the cell that