Chauvelin no longer made any pretence to hold Armand by the arm. By temperament as well as by profession a spy, there was one subject at least which he had mastered thoroughly: that was the study of human nature. Though occasionally an exceptionally complex mental organisation baffled him—as in the case of Sir Percy Blakeney—he prided himself, and justly, too, on reading natures like that of Armand St. Just as he would an open book.
The excitable disposition of the Latin races he knew out and out; he knew exactly how far a sentimental situation would lead a young Frenchman like Armand, who was by disposition chivalrous, and by temperament essentially passionate. Above all things, he knew when and how far he could trust a man to do either a sublime action or an essentially foolish one.
Therefore he walked along contentedly now, not even looking back to see whether St. Just was following him. He knew that he did.
His thoughts only dwelt on the young enthusiast—in his mind he called him the young fool—in order to weigh in the balance the mighty possibilities that would accrue from the present sequence of events. The fixed idea ever working in the man’s scheming brain had already transformed a vague belief into a certainty. That the Scarlet Pimpernel was in Paris at the present moment Chauvelin had now become convinced. How far he could turn the capture of Armand St. Just to the triumph of his own ends remained to be seen.
But this he did know: the Scarlet Pimpernel—the man whom he had learned to know, to dread, and even in a grudging manner to admire—was not like to leave one of his followers in the lurch. Marguerite’s brother in the Temple would be the surest decoy for the elusive meddler who still, and in spite of all care and precaution, continued to baffle the army of spies set upon his track.
Chauvelin could hear Armand’s light, elastic footsteps resounding behind him on the flagstones. A world of intoxicating possibilities surged up before him. Ambition, which two successive dire failures had atrophied in his breast, once more rose up buoyant and hopeful. Once he had sworn to lay the Scarlet Pimpernel by the heels, and that oath was not yet wholly forgotten; it had lain dormant after the catastrophe of Boulogne, but with the sight of Armand St. Just it had re-awakened and confronted him again with the strength of a likely fulfilment.
The courtyard looked gloomy and deserted. The thin drizzle which still fell from a persistently leaden sky effectually held every outline of masonry, of column, or of gate hidden as beneath a shroud. The corridor which skirted it all round was ill-lighted save by an occasional oil-lamp fixed in the wall.
But Chauvelin knew his way well. Heron’s lodgings gave on the second courtyard, the Square du Nazaret, and the way thither led past the main square tower, in the top floor of which the uncrowned King of France eked out his miserable existence as the plaything of a rough cobbler and his wife.
Just beneath its frowning bastions Chauvelin turned back towards Armand. He pointed with a careless hand up-wards to the central tower.
“We have got little Capet in there,” he said dryly. “Your chivalrous Scarlet Pimpernel has not ventured in these precincts yet, you see.”
Armand was silent. He had no difficulty in looking unconcerned; his thoughts were so full of Jeanne that he cared but little at this moment for any Bourbon king or for the destinies of France.
Now the two men reached the postern gate. A couple of sentinels were standing by, but the gate itself was open, and from within there came the sound of bustle and of noise, of a good deal of swearing, and also of loud laughter.
The guard-room gave on the left of the gate, and the laughter came from there. It was brilliantly lighted, and Armand, peering in, in the wake of Chauvelin, could see groups of soldiers sitting and standing about. There was a table in the centre of the room, and on it a number of jugs and pewter mugs, packets of cards, and overturned boxes of dice.
But the bustle did not come from the guard-room; it came from the landing and the stone stairs beyond.
Chauvelin, apparently curious, had passed through the gate, and Armand followed him. The light from the open door of the guard-room cut sharply across the landing, making the gloom beyond appear more dense and almost solid. From out the darkness, fitfully intersected by a lanthorn apparently carried to and fro, moving figures loomed out ghost-like and weirdly gigantic. Soon Armand distinguished a number of large objects that encumbered the landing, and as he and Chauvelin left the sharp light of the guard-room behind them, he could see that the large objects were pieces of furniture of every shape and size; a wooden bedstead—dismantled—leaned against the wall, a black horsehair sofa blocked the way to the tower stairs, and there were numberless chairs and several tables piled one on the top of the other.
In the midst of this litter a stout, flabby-cheeked man stood, apparently giving directions as to its removal to persons at present unseen.
“Hola, Papa Simon!” exclaimed Chauvelin jovially; “moving out to-day? What?”
“Yes, thank the Lord!—if there be a Lord!” retorted the other curtly. “Is that you, citizen Chauvelin?”
“In person, citizen. I did not know you were leaving quite so soon. Is citizen Heron anywhere about?”
“Just left,” replied Simon. “He had a last look at Capet just before my wife locked the brat up in the inner room. Now he’s gone back to his lodgings.”
A man carrying a chest, empty of its drawers, on his back now came stumbling down the tower staircase. Madame Simon followed close on his heels, steadying the chest with one hand.
“We had better begin to load up the cart,” she called to her husband in a high-pitched querulous voice; “the corridor is getting too much encumbered.”
She looked suspiciously at Chauvelin and at Armand, and when she encountered the former’s bland, unconcerned gaze she suddenly shivered and drew her black shawl closer round her shoulders.
“Bah!” she said, “I shall be glad to get out of this God-forsaken hole. I hate the very sight of these walls.”
“Indeed, the citizeness does not look over robust in health,” said Chauvelin with studied politeness. “The stay in the tower did not, mayhap, bring forth all the fruits of prosperity which she had anticipated.”
The woman eyed him with dark suspicion lurking in her hollow eyes.
“I don’t know what you mean, citizen,” she said with a shrug of her wide shoulders.
“Oh! I meant nothing,” rejoined Chauvelin, smiling. “I am so interested in your removal; busy man as I am, it has amused me to watch you. Whom have you got to help you with the furniture?”
“Dupont, the man-of-all-work, from the concierge,” said Simon curtly. “Citizen Heron would not allow any one to come in from the outside.”
“Rightly too. Have the new commissaries come yet?
“Only citizen Cochefer. He is waiting upstairs for the others.”
“And Capet?”
“He is all safe. Citizen Heron came to see him, and then he told me to lock the little vermin up in the inner room. Citizen Cochefer had just arrived by that time, and he has remained in charge.”
During all this while the man with the chest on his back was waiting for orders. Bent nearly double, he was grumbling audibly at his uncomfortable position.
“Does the citizen want to break my back?” he muttered.
“We had best get along—quoi?”
He asked if he should begin to carry the furniture out into the street.
“Two sous have I got to pay every ten minutes to the lad who holds my nag,” he said, muttering under his breath; “we shall be all night at this rate.”
“Begin to load then,” commanded Simon gruffly. “Here!—begin with this sofa.”
“You’ll have to give me a hand with that,” said the man. “Wait a bit; I’ll just see that everything is all right in the cart. I’ll be back directly.”
“Take something with you then as you are going down,” said Madame Simon in her querulous voice.
The man picked up a basket of linen that stood in the angle by the door. He hoisted it on his back and shuffled away with it across the landing and out through the gate.
“How did Capet like parting from his papa and maman?” asked Chauvelin with a laugh.
“H’m!” growled Simon laconically. “He will find out soon enough how well off he was under our care.”
“Have the other commissaries come yet?”
“No. But they will be here directly. Citizen Cochefer is upstairs mounting guard over Capet.”
“Well, good-bye, Papa Simon,” concluded Chauvelin jovially. “Citizeness, your servant!”
He bowed with unconcealed irony to the cobbler’s wife, and nodded to Simon, who expressed by a volley of motley oaths his exact feelings with regard to all the agents of the Committee of General Security.
“Six months of this penal servitude have we had,” he said roughly, “and no thanks or pension. I would as soon serve a ci-devant aristo as your accursed Committee.”
The man Dupont had returned. Stolidly, after the fashion of his kind, he commenced the removal of citizen Simon’s goods. He seemed a clumsy enough creature, and Simon and his wife had to do most of the work themselves.
Chauvelin watched the moving forms for a while, then he shrugged his shoulders with a laugh of indifference, and turned on his heel.
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