The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Orczy (good romance books to read .txt) 📕

So he waited patiently for a while. No doubt the aristo would remain here under shelter until the storm had abated. Soon the sound of voices died down, and an extraordinary silence descended on this miserable, abandoned corner of old Paris. The silence became all the more marked after a while, because the rain ceased its monotonous pattering and the soughing of the wind was stilled. It was, in fact, this amazing stillness which set citizen Tournefort thinking. Evidently the aristo did not intend to come out of the lodge tonight. Well! Tournefort had not meant to make himself unpleasant inside the house, or to have a quarrel just yet with the traitor Bertin, whoever he was; but his hand was forced and he had no option.

The door of the lodge was locked. He tugged vigorously at the bell again and again, for at first he got no answer. A few minutes later he heard the sound of shuffling footsteps upon creaking boards. The door was opened, and a man in night attire, with bare, thin legs and tattered carpet slippers on his feet, confronted an exceedingly astonished servant of the Committee of Public Safety. Indeed, Tournefort thought that he must have been dreaming, or that he was dreaming now. For the man who opened the door to him was well known to every agent of the Committee. He was an ex-soldier who had been crippled years ago by the loss of one arm, and had held the post of concierge in a house in the Ruelle du Paradis ever since. His name was Grosjean. He was very old, and nearly doubled up with rheumatism, had scarcely any hair on his head or flesh on his bones. At this moment he appeared to be suffering from a cold in the head, for his eyes were streaming and his narrow, hooked nose was adorned by a drop of moisture at its tip. In fact, poor old Grosjean looked more like a dilapidated scarecrow than a dangerous conspirator. Tournefort literally gasped at sight of him, and Grosjean uttered a kind of croak, intended, no doubt, for complete surprise.

“Citizen Tournefort!” he exclaimed. “Name of a dog! What are you doing here at this hour and in this abominable weather? Come in! Come in!” he added, and, turning on his heel, he shuffled back into the inner room, and then returned carrying a lighted lamp, which he set upon the table. “Amélie left a sup of hot coffee on the hob in the kitchen before she went to bed. You must have a drop of that.”

He was about to shuffle off again when Tournefort broke in roughly:

“None of that nonsense, Grosjean! Where are the aristos?”

“The aristos, citizen?” queried Grosjean, and nothing could have looked more utterly, more ludicrously bewildered than did the old concierge at this moment. “What aristos?”

“Bertin and Madame la Comtesse,” retorted Tournefort gruffly. “I heard them talking.”

“You have been dreaming, citizen Tournefort,” the old man said, with a husky little laugh. “Sit down, and let me get you some coffee⁠—”

“Don’t try and hoodwink me, Grosjean!” Tournefort cried now in a sudden access of rage. “I tell you that I saw the light. I heard the aristos talking. There was a man named Bertin, and a woman he called ‘Madame la Comtesse,’ and I say that some devilish royalist plot is being hatched here, and that you, Grosjean, will suffer for it if you try and shield those aristos.”

“But, citizen Tournefort,” replied the concierge meekly, “I assure you that I have seen no aristos. The door of my bedroom was open, and the lamp was by my bedside. Amélie, too, has only been in bed a few minutes. You ask her! There has been no one, I tell you⁠—no one! I should have seen and heard them⁠—the door was open,” he reiterated pathetically.

“We’ll soon see about that!” was Tournefort’s curt comment.

But it was his turn indeed to be utterly bewildered. He searched⁠—none too gently⁠—the squalid little lodge through and through, turned the paltry sticks of furniture over, hauled little Amélie, Grosjean’s granddaughter, out of bed, searched under the mattresses, and even poked his head up the chimney.

Grosjean watched him wholly unperturbed. These were strange times, and friend Tournefort had obviously gone a little off his head. The worthy old concierge calmly went on getting the coffee ready. Only when presently Tournefort, worn out with anger and futile exertion, threw himself, with many an oath, into the one armchair, Grosjean remarked coolly:

“I tell you what I think it is, citizen. If you were standing just by the door of the lodge you had the back staircase of the house immediately behind you. The partition wall is very thin, and there is a disused door just there also. No doubt the voices came from there. You see, if there had been any aristos here,” he added naively, “they could not have flown up the chimney, could they?”

That argument was certainly unanswerable. But Tournefort was out of temper. He roughly ordered Grosjean to bring the lamp and show him the back staircase and the disused door. The concierge obeyed without a murmur. He was not in the least disturbed or frightened by all this blustering. He was only afraid that getting out of bed had made his cold worse. But he knew Tournefort of old. A good fellow, but inclined to be noisy and arrogant since he was in the employ of the Government. Grosjean took the precaution of putting on his trousers and wrapping an old shawl round his shoulders. Then he had a final sip of hot coffee; after which he picked up the lamp and guided Tournefort out of the lodge.

The wind had quite gone down by now. The lamp scarcely flickered as Grosjean held it above his head.

“Just here, citizen Tournefort,” he said, and turned sharply to his left. But the next sound which he uttered was a loud croak of