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

Blakeney paid no heed seemingly to the other’s hesitation. He did not even look up at him, but quietly drew pen and paper towards him, and made ready to write.

“What do you wish me to say?” he asked simply.

“Will that young blackguard answer your purpose, citizen Chauvelin?” queried Héron roughly.

Obviously the same doubt had crossed his mind. Chauvelin quickly reassured him.

“Better than anyone else,” he said firmly. “Will you write at my dictation, Sir Percy?”

“I am waiting to do so, my dear sir.”

“Begin your letter as you wish, then; now continue.”

And he began to dictate slowly, watching every word as it left Blakeney’s pen.

“ ‘I cannot stand my present position any longer. Citizen Héron, and also M. Chauvelin⁠—’ Yes, Sir Percy, Chauvelin, not Chambertin⁠ ⁠… C, H, A, U, V, E, L, I, N.⁠ ⁠… That is quite right⁠—‘have made this prison a perfect hell for me.’ ”

Sir Percy looked up from his writing, smiling.

“You wrong yourself, my dear M. Chambertin!” he said; “I have really been most comfortable.”

“I wish to place the matter before your friends in as indulgent a manner as I can,” retorted Chauvelin dryly.

“I thank you, sir. Pray proceed.”

“… ‘a perfect hell for me,’ ” resumed the other. “Have you that?⁠ ⁠… ‘and I have been forced to give way. Tomorrow we start from here at dawn; and I will guide citizen Héron to the place where he can find the Dauphin. But the authorities demand that one of my followers, one who has once been a member of the League of the Scarlet Pimpernel, shall accompany me on this expedition. I therefore ask you’⁠—or ‘desire you’ or ‘beg you’⁠—whichever you prefer, Sir Percy⁠ ⁠…”

“ ‘Ask you’ will do quite nicely. This is really very interesting, you know.”

“… ‘to be prepared to join the expedition. We start at dawn, and you would be required to be at the main gate of the house of Justice at six o’clock precisely. I have an assurance from the authorities that your life should be inviolate, but if you refuse to accompany me, the guillotine will await me on the morrow.’ ”

“ ‘The guillotine will await me on the morrow.’ That sounds quite cheerful, does it not, M. Chambertin?” said the prisoner, who had not evinced the slightest surprise at the wording of the letter whilst he wrote at the other’s dictation. “Do you know, I quite enjoyed writing this letter; it so reminded me of happy days in Boulogne.”

Chauvelin pressed his lips together. Truly now he felt that a retort from him would have been undignified, more especially as just at this moment there came from the guard room the sound of men’s voices talking and laughing, the occasional clang of steel, or of a heavy boot against the tiled floor, the rattling of dice, or a sudden burst of laughter⁠—sounds, in fact, that betokened the presence of a number of soldiers close by.

Chauvelin contented himself with a nod in the direction of the guardroom.

“The conditions are somewhat different now,” he said placidly, “from those that reigned in Boulogne. But will you not sign your letter, Sir Percy?”

“With pleasure, sir,” responded Blakeney, as with an elaborate flourish of the pen he appended his name to the missive.

Chauvelin was watching him with eyes that would have shamed a lynx by their keenness. He took up the completed letter, read it through very carefully, as if to find some hidden meaning behind the very words which he himself had dictated; he studied the signature, and looked vainly for a mark or a sign that might convey a different sense to that which he had intended. Finally, finding none, he folded the letter up with his own hand, and at once slipped it in the pocket of his coat.

“Take care, M. Chambertin,” said Blakeney lightly; “it will burn a hole in that elegant vest of yours.”

“It will have no time to do that, Sir Percy,” retorted Chauvelin blandly; “an you will furnish me with citizen St. Just’s present address, I will myself convey the letter to him at once.”

“At this hour of the night? Poor old Armand, he’ll be abed. But his address, sir, is No. 32, Rue de la Croix Blanche, on the first floor, the door on your right as you mount the stairs; you know the room well, citizen Chauvelin; you have been in it before. And now,” he added with a loud and ostentatious yawn, “shall we all to bed? We start at dawn, you said, and I am so d⁠⸺⁠d fatigued.”

Frankly, he did not look it now. Chauvelin himself, despite his matured plans, despite all the precautions that he meant to take for the success of this gigantic scheme, felt a sudden strange sense of fear creeping into his bones. Half an hour ago he had seen a man in what looked like the last stage of utter physical exhaustion, a hunched up figure, listless and limp, hands that twitched nervously, the face as of a dying man. Now those outward symptoms were still there certainly; the face by the light of the lamp still looked livid, the lips bloodless, the hands emaciated and waxen, but the eyes!⁠—they were still hollow, with heavy lids still purple, but in their depths there was a curious, mysterious light, a look that seemed to see something that was hidden to natural sight.

Citizen Chauvelin thought that Héron, too, must be conscious of this, but the Committee’s agent was sprawling on a chair, sucking a short-stemmed pipe, and gazing with entire animal satisfaction on the prisoner.

“The most perfect piece of work we have ever accomplished, you and I, citizen Chauvelin,” he said complacently.

“You think that everything is quite satisfactory?” asked the other with anxious stress on his words.

“Everything, of course. Now you see to the letter. I will give final orders for tomorrow, but I shall sleep in the guardroom.”

“And I on that inviting bed,” interposed the prisoner lightly, as he rose to his feet. “Your servant, citizens!”

He