The Elusive Pimpernel Read online

  The room was close and dark, filled with the smoke from a defectivechimney.

  A tiny boudoir, once the dainty sanctum of imperious Marie Antoinette; afaint and ghostly odour, like unto the perfume of spectres, seemed stillto cling to the stained walls, and to the torn Gobelin tapestries.

  Everywhere lay the impress of a heavy and destroying hand: that of thegreat and glorious Revolution.

  In the mud-soiled corners of the room a few chairs, with brocadedcushions rudely torn, leant broken and desolate against the walls. Asmall footstool, once gilt-legged and satin-covered, had been overturnedand roughly kicked to one side, and there it lay on its back, like somelittle animal that had been hurt, stretching its broken limbs upwards,pathetic to behold.

  From the delicately wrought Buhl table the silver inlay had been harshlystripped out of its bed of shell.

  Across the Lunette, painted by Boucher and representing a chasteDiana surrounded by a bevy of nymphs, an uncouth hand had scribbled incharcoal the device of the Revolution: Liberte, Egalite, Fraterniteou la Mort; whilst, as if to give a crowning point to the work ofdestruction and to emphasise its motto, someone had decorated theportrait of Marie Antoinette with a scarlet cap, and drawn a red andominous line across her neck.

  And at the table two men were sitting in close and eager conclave.

  Between them a solitary tallow candle, unsnuffed and weirdly flickering,threw fantastic shadows upon the walls, and illumined with fitful anduncertain light the faces of the two men.

  How different were these in character!

  One, high cheek-boned, with coarse, sensuous lips, and hair elaboratelyand carefully powdered; the other pale and thin-lipped, with the keeneyes of a ferret and a high intellectual forehead, from which the sleekbrown hair was smoothly brushed away.

  The first of these men was Robespierre, the ruthless and incorruptibledemagogue; the other was Citizen Chauvelin, ex-ambassador of theRevolutionary Government at the English Court.

  The hour was late, and the noises from the great, seething citypreparing for sleep came to this remote little apartment in the nowdeserted Palace of the Tuileries, merely as a faint and distant echo.

  It was two days after the Fructidor Riots. Paul Deroulede and the womanJuliette Marny, both condemned to death, had been literally spiritedaway out of the cart which was conveying them from the Hall of Justiceto the Luxembourg Prison, and news had just been received by theCommittee of Public Safety that at Lyons, the Abbe du Mesnil, with theci-devant Chevalier d'Egremont and the latter's wife and family, hadeffected a miraculous and wholly incomprehensible escape from theNorthern Prison.

  But this was not all. When Arras fell into the hands of theRevolutionary army, and a regular cordon was formed round the town, sothat not a single royalist traitor might escape, some three score womenand children, twelve priests, the old aristocrats Chermeuil, Dellevilleand Galipaux and many others, managed to pass the barriers and werenever recaptured.

  Raids were made on the suspected houses: in Paris chiefly where theescaped prisoners might have found refuge, or better still where theirhelpers and rescuers might still be lurking. Foucquier Tinville, PublicProsecutor, led and conducted these raids, assisted by that bloodthirstyvampire, Merlin. They heard of a house in the Rue de l'Ancienne Comediewhere an Englishmen was said to have lodged for two days.

  They demanded admittance, and were taken to the rooms where theEnglishman had stayed. These were bare and squalid, like hundreds ofother rooms in the poorer quarters of Paris. The landlady, toothless andgrimy, had not yet tidied up the one where the Englishman had slept: infact she did not know he had left for good.

  He had paid for his room, a week in advance, and came and went as heliked, she explained to Citizen Tinville. She never bothered about him,as he never took a meal in the house, and he was only there two days.She did not know her lodger was English until the day he left. Shethought he was a Frenchman from the South, as he certainly had apeculiar accent when he spoke.

  "It was the day of the riots," she continued; "he would go out, and Itold him I did not think that the streets would be safe for a foreignerlike him: for he always wore such very fine clothes, and I made surethat the starving men and women of Paris would strip them off his backwhen their tempers were roused. But he only laughed. He gave me a bit ofpaper and told me that if he did not return I might conclude that he hadbeen killed, and if the Committee of Public Safety asked me questionsabout me, I was just to show the bit of paper and there would be nofurther trouble."

  She had talked volubly, more than a little terrified at Merlin's scowls,and the attitude of Citizen Tinville, who was known to be very severe ifanyone committed any blunders.

  But the Citizeness--her name was Brogard and her husband's brother keptan inn in the neighbourhood of Calais--the Citizeness Brogard had aclear conscience. She held a license from the Committee of Public Safetyfor letting apartments, and she had always given due notice to theCommittee of the arrival and departure of her lodgers. The only thingwas that if any lodger paid her more than ordinarily well for theaccommodation and he so desired it, she would send in the noticeconveniently late, and conveniently vaguely worded as to thedescription, status and nationality of her more liberal patrons.

  This had occurred in the case of her recent English visitor.

  But she did not explain it quite like that to Citizen Foucquier Tinvilleor to Citizen Merlin.

  However, she was rather frightened, and produced the scrap of paperwhich the Englishman had left with her, together with the assurance thatwhen she showed it there would be no further trouble.

  Tinville took it roughly out of her hand, but would not glance at it.He crushed it into a ball and then Merlin snatched it from him with acoarse laugh, smoothed out the creases on his knee and studied it for amoment.

  There were two lines of what looked like poetry, written in a languagewhich Merlin did not understand. English, no doubt.

  But what was perfectly clear, and easily comprehended by any one, wasthe little drawing in the corner, done in red ink and representing asmall star-shaped flower.

  Then Tinville and Merlin both cursed loudly and volubly, and biddingtheir men follow them, turned away from the house in the Rue del'Ancienne Comedie and left its toothless landlady on her own doorstepstill volubly protesting her patriotism and her desire to serve thegovernment of the Republic.

  Tinville and Merlin, however, took the scrap of paper to CitizenRobespierre, who smiled grimly as he in his turn crushed the offensivelittle document in the palm of his well-washed hands.

  Robespierre did not swear. He never wasted either words or oaths, but heslipped the bit of paper inside the double lid of his silver snuff boxand then he sent a special messenger to Citizen Chauvelin in the RueCorneille, bidding him come that same evening after ten o'clock to roomNo. 16 in the ci-devant Palace of the Tuileries.

  It was now half-past ten, and Chauvelin and Robespierre sat opposite oneanother in the ex-boudoir of Queen Marie Antoinette, and between them onthe table, just below the tallow-candle, was a much creased, exceedinglygrimy bit of paper.

  It had passed through several unclean hands before Citizen Robespierre'simmaculately white fingers had smoothed it out and placed it before theeyes of ex-Ambassador Chauvelin.

  The latter, however, was not looking at the paper, he was not evenlooking at the pale, cruel face before him. He had closed his eyes andfor a moment had lost sight of the small dark room, of Robespierre'sruthless gaze, of the mud-stained walls and greasy floor. He was seeing,as in a bright and sudden vision, the brilliantly-lighted salons of theForeign Office in London, with beautiful Marguerite Blakeney glidingqueenlike on the arm of the Prince of Wales.

  He heard the flutter of many fans, the frou-frou of silk dresses, andabove all the din and sound of dance music, he heard an inane laugh andan affected voice repeating the doggerel rhyme that was even now writtenon that dirty piece of paper which Robespierre had placed before him:

  "We seek him here, and we s
eek him there, Those Frenchies seek him everywhere! Is he in heaven, is he in hell, That demmed elusive Pimpernel?"

  It was a mere flash! One of memory's swiftly effaced pictures, when sheshows us for the fraction of a second, indelible pictures from out ourpast. Chauvelin, in that same second, while his own eyes were closedand Robespierre's fixed upon him, also saw the lonely cliffs of Calais,heard the same voice singing: "God save the King!" the volley ofmusketry, the despairing cries of Marguerite Blakeney; and once again hefelt the keen and bitter pang of complete humiliation and defeat.

  Chapter III: Ex-Ambassador Chauvelin