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

He looked up at Molé as he said this, for the latter, though his shoulders were bent, was unusually tall, and Molé took the papers from him. Thus for the space of a few seconds the two men looked into one another’s face, eyes to eyes⁠—and suddenly Chauvelin felt an icy sweat coursing down his spine. The eyes into which he gazed had a strange, ironical twinkle in them, a kind of good-humoured arrogance, whilst through the firm, clear-cut lips, half hidden by a dirty and ill-kempt beard, there came the sound⁠—oh! a mere echo⁠—of a quaint and inane laugh.

The whole thing⁠—it seemed like a vision⁠—was over in a second. Chauvelin, sick and faint with the sudden rush of blood to his head, closed his eyes for one brief instant. The next, the crowd had closed round him; anxious inquiries reached his reawakened senses.

But he uttered one quick, hoarse cry:

“Hébert! A moi! Are you there?”

“Present, citizen!” came in immediate response. And a tall figure in the tattered uniform affected by the revolutionary guard stepped briskly out of the crowd. Chauvelin’s claw-like hand was shaking visibly.

“The man Molé,” he called in a voice husky with excitement. “Seize him at once! And, name of a dog! do not allow a living soul in or out of the house!”

Hébert turned on his heel. The next moment his harsh voice was heard above the din and the general hubbub around:

“Quite safe, citizen!” he called to his chief. “We have the rogue right enough!”

There was much shouting and much cursing, a great deal of bustle and confusion, as the men of the Sûreté closed the doors of the defunct demagogue’s lodgings. Some two score men, a dozen or so women, were locked in, inside the few rooms which reeked of dirt and of disease. They jostled and pushed, screamed and protested. For two or three minutes the din was quite deafening. Simonne Evrard pushed her way up to the forefront of the crowd.

“What is this I hear?” she queried peremptorily. “Who is accusing citizen Molé? And of what, I should like to know? I am responsible for everyone inside these apartments⁠ ⁠… and if citizen Marat were still alive⁠—”

Chauvelin appeared unaware of all the confusion and of the woman’s protestations. He pushed his way through the crowd to the corner of the anteroom where Molé stood, crouching and hunched up, his grimy hands idly fingering the papers which Chauvelin had returned to him a moment ago. Otherwise he did not move.

He stood, silent and sullen; and when Chauvelin, who had succeeded in mastering his emotion, gave the peremptory command: “Take this man to the depot at once. And do not allow him one instant out of your sight!” he made no attempt at escape.

He allowed Hébert and the men to seize him, to lead him away. He followed without a word, without a struggle. His massive figure was hunched up like that of an old man; his hands, which still clung to his identity papers, trembled slightly like those of a man who is very frightened and very helpless. The men of the Sûreté handled him very roughly, but he made no protest. The woman Evrard did all the protesting, vowing that the people would not long tolerate such tyranny. She even forced her way up to Hébert. With a gesture of fury she tried to strike him in the face, and continued, with a loud voice, her insults and objurgations, until, with a movement of his bayonet, he pushed her roughly out of the way.

After that Paul Molé, surrounded by the guard, was led without ceremony out of the house. Chauvelin gazed after him as if he had been brought face to face with a ghoul.

Chauvelin hurried to the depot. After those few seconds wherein he had felt dazed, incredulous, almost under a spell, he had quickly regained the mastery of his nerves, and regained, too, that intense joy which anticipated triumph is wont to give.

In the out-at-elbows, half-starved servant of the murdered Terrorist, citizen Chauvelin, of the Committee of Public Safety, had recognised his arch enemy, that meddlesome and adventurous Englishman who chose to hide his identity under the pseudonym of the Scarlet Pimpernel. He knew that he could reckon on Hébert; his orders not to allow the prisoner one moment out of sight would of a certainty be strictly obeyed.

Hébert, indeed, a few moments later, greeted his chief outside the doors of the depot with the welcome news that Paul Molé was safely under lock and key.

“You had no trouble with him?” Chauvelin queried, with ill-concealed eagerness.

“No, no! citizen, no trouble,” was Hébert’s quick reply. “He seems to be a well-known rogue in these parts,” he continued with a complacent guffaw; “and some of his friends tried to hustle us at the corner of the Rue de Tourraine; no doubt with a view to getting the prisoner away. But we were too strong for them, and Paul Molé is now sulking in his cell and still protesting that his arrest is an outrage against the liberty of the people.”

Chauvelin made no further remark. He was obviously too excited to speak. Pushing past Hébert and the men of the Sûreté who stood about the dark and narrow passages of the depot, he sought the Commissary of the Section in the latter’s office.

It was now close upon ten o’clock. The citizen Commissary Cuisinier had finished his work for the day and was preparing to go home and to bed. He was a family man, had been a respectable bourgeois in his day, and though he was a rank opportunist and had sacrificed not only his political convictions but also his conscience to the exigencies of the time, he still nourished in his innermost heart a secret contempt for the revolutionary brigands who ruled over France at this hour.

To any other man than citizen Chauvelin, the citizen Commissary would, no doubt, have given