El Dorado by Baroness Orczy (if you liked this book .txt) 📕

had haunted her, the phantom of an agonising suspicion.

But now the phantom had vanished never to return. Armand was sitting close beside her, and he told her that the chief had selected him amongst all the others to stand by him inside the walls of Paris until the last.

“I shall mayhap,” thus closed that precious document, “have no means of ascertaining definitely whether you will act in accordance with this letter. But somehow, Armand, I know that you will.”

“I know that you will, Armand,” reiterated Marguerite fervently.

She had only been too eager to be convinced; the dread and dark suspicion which had been like a hideous poisoned sting had only vaguely touched her soul; it had not gone in very deeply. How could it, when in its death-dealing passage it encountered the rampart of tender, almost motherly love?

Armand, trying to read his sister’s thoughts in the depths of her blue eyes, found the look in them limpid and clear. Percy’s message to Armand had reassured her just as he had intended that it should do. Fate had dealt over harshly with her as it was, and Blakeney’s remorse for the sorrow which he had already caused her, was scarcely less keen than Armand’s. He did not wish her to bear the intolerable burden of hatred against her brother; and by binding St. Just close to him at the supreme hour of danger he hoped to prove to the woman whom he loved so passionately that Armand was worthy of trust.

Part III XXXV The Last Phase

“Well? How is it now?”

“The last phase, I think.”

“He will yield?”

“He must.”

“Bah! you have said it yourself often enough; those English are tough.”

“It takes time to hack them to pieces, perhaps. In this case even you, citizen Chauvelin, said that it would take time. Well, it has taken just seventeen days, and now the end is in sight.”

It was close on midnight in the guardroom which gave on the innermost cell of the Conciergerie. Héron had just visited the prisoner as was his wont at this hour of the night. He had watched the changing of the guard, inspected the night-watch, questioned the sergeant in charge, and finally he had been on the point of retiring to his own new quarters in the house of Justice, in the near vicinity of the Conciergerie, when citizen Chauvelin entered the guardroom unexpectedly and detained his colleague with the peremptory question:

“How is it now?”

“If you are so near the end, citizen Héron,” he now said, sinking his voice to a whisper, “why not make a final effort and end it tonight?”

“I wish I could; the anxiety is wearing me out more’n him,” he added with a jerky movement of the head in direction of the inner cell.

“Shall I try?” rejoined Chauvelin grimly.

“Yes, an you wish.”

Citizen Héron’s long limbs were sprawling on a guardroom chair. In this low narrow room he looked like some giant whose body had been carelessly and loosely put together by a ’prentice hand in the art of manufacture. His broad shoulders were bent, probably under the weight of anxiety to which he had referred, and his head, with the lank, shaggy hair overshadowing the brow, was sunk deep down on his chest.

Chauvelin looked on his friend and associate with no small measure of contempt. He would no doubt have preferred to conclude the present difficult transaction entirely in his own way and alone; but equally there was no doubt that the Committee of Public Safety did not trust him quite so fully as it used to do before the fiasco at Calais and the blunders of Boulogne. Héron, on the other hand, enjoyed to its outermost the confidence of his colleagues; his ferocious cruelty and his callousness were well known, whilst physically, owing to his great height and bulky if loosely knit frame, he had a decided advantage over his trim and slender friend.

As far as the bringing of prisoners to trial was concerned, the chief agent of the Committee of General Security had been given a perfectly free hand by the decree of the 27th Nivôse. At first, therefore, he had experienced no difficulty when he desired to keep the Englishman in close confinement for a time without hurrying on that summary trial and condemnation which the populace had loudly demanded, and to which they felt that they were entitled to as a public holiday. The death of the Scarlet Pimpernel on the guillotine had been a spectacle promised by every demagogue who desired to purchase a few votes by holding out visions of pleasant doings to come; and during the first few days the mob of Paris was content to enjoy the delights of expectation.

But now seventeen days had gone by and still the Englishman was not being brought to trial. The pleasure-loving public was waxing impatient, and earlier this evening, when citizen Héron had shown himself in the stalls of the national theatre, he was greeted by a crowded audience with decided expressions of disapproval and open mutterings of:

“What of the Scarlet Pimpernel?”

It almost looked as if he would have to bring that accursed Englishman to the guillotine without having wrested from him the secret which he would have given a fortune to possess. Chauvelin, who had also been present at the theatre, had heard the expressions of discontent; hence his visit to his colleague at this late hour of the night.

“Shall I try?” he had queried with some impatience, and a deep sigh of satisfaction escaped his thin lips when the chief agent, wearied and discouraged, had reluctantly agreed.

“Let the men make as much noise as they like,” he added with an enigmatical smile. “The Englishman and I will want an accompaniment to our pleasant conversation.”

Héron growled a surly assent, and without another word Chauvelin turned towards the inner cell. As he stepped in he allowed the iron bar to fall into its socket behind him. Then he went farther into the room