The Elusive Pimpernel by Baroness Emmuska Orczy Orczy (most interesting books to read txt) 📕

As soon as the door had closed behind Marguerite, there came from somewhere in the room the sound of a yawn, a grunt and a volley of oaths.

The flickering light of the tallow candles had failed to penetrate into all the corners, and now from out one of these dark depths, a certain something began to detach itself, and to move forward towards the table at which Chauvelin had once more resumed his seat.

“Has the damned aristocrat gone at last?” queried a hoarse voice, as a burly body clad in loose-fitting coat and mud-stained boots and breeches appeared within the narrow circle of light.

“Yes,” replied Chauvelin curtly.

“And a cursed long time you have been with the baggage,” grunted the other surlily. “Another five minutes and I'd have taken the matter in my own hands.

“An assumption of authority,” commented Chauvelin quietly, “to which your position here does not entitle you, Citizen Collot.”

Collot d'Herbois lounged lazily forward, and presently he threw his ill-knit figure into the chair lately vacated by Marguerite. His heavy, square face bore distinct traces of the fatigue endured in the past twenty-four hours on horseback or in jolting market waggons. His temper too appeared to have suffered on the way, and, at Chauvelin's curt and dictatorial replies, he looked as surly as a chained dog.

“You were wasting your breath over that woman,” he muttered, bringing a large and grimy fist heavily down on the table, “and your measures are not quite so sound as your fondly imagine, Citizen Chauvelin.”

“They were mostly of your imagining, Citizen Collot,” rejoined the other quietly, “and of your suggestion.”

“I added a touch of strength and determination to your mild milk-and-water notions, Citizen,” snarled Collot spitefully. “I'd have knocked that intriguing woman's brains out at the very first possible opportunity, had I been consulted earlier than this.”

“Quite regardless of the fact that such violent measures would completely damn all our chances of success as far as the capture of the Scarlet Pimpernel is concerned,” remarked Chauvelin drily, with a contemptuous shrug of the shoulders. “Once his wife is dead, the Englishman will never run his head into the noose which I have so carefully prepared for him.”

“So you say, Chauvelin; and therefore I suggested to you certain measures to prevent the woman escaping which you will find adequate, I hope.”

“You need have no fear, Citizen Collot,” said Chauvelin curtly, “this woman will make no attempt at escape now.”

“If she does...” and Collot d'Herbois swore an obscene oath.

“I think she understands that we mean to put our threat in execution.”

“Threat?... It was no empty threat, Citizen.... Sacre tonnerre! if that woman escapes now, by all the devils in hell I swear that I'll wield the guillotine myself and cut off the head of every able-bodied man or woman in Boulogne, with my own hands.”

As he said this his face assumed such an expression of inhuman cruelty, such a desire to kill, such a savage lust for blood, that instinctively Chauvelin shuddered and shrank away from his colleague. All through his career there is no doubt that this man, who was of gentle birth, of gentle breeding, and who had once been called M. le Marquis de Chauvelin, must have suffered in his susceptibilities and in his pride when in contact with the revolutionaries with whom he had chosen to cast his lot. He could not have thrown off all his old ideas of refinement quite so easily, as to feel happy in the presence of such men as Collot d'Herbois, or Marat in his day—men who had become brute beasts, more ferocious far than any wild animal, more scientifically cruel than any feline prowler in jungle or desert.

One look in Collot's distorted face was sufficient at this moment to convince Chauvelin that it were useless for him to view the proclamation against the citizens of Boulogne merely as an idle threat, even if he had