El Dorado: An Adventure of the Scarlet Pimpernel

CHAPTER XXXVI. SUBMISSION

Silence reigned in the narrow cell for a few moments, whilst two human jackals stood motionless over their captured prey.

A savage triumph gleamed in Chauvelin’s eyes, and even Heron, dull and brutal though he was, had become vaguely conscious of the great change that had come over the prisoner.

Blakeney, with a gesture and a sigh of hopeless exhaustion had once more rested both his elbows on the table; his head fell heavy and almost lifeless downward in his arms.

“Curse you, man!” cried Heron almost involuntarily. “Why in the name of hell did you wait so long?”

Then, as the prisoner made no reply, but only raised his head slightly, and looked on the other two men with dulled, wearied eyes, Chauvelin interposed calmly:

“More than a fortnight has been wasted in useless obstinacy, Sir Percy. Fortunately it is not too late.”

“Capet?” said Heron hoarsely, “tell us, where is Capet?”

He leaned across the table, his eyes were bloodshot with the keenness of his excitement, his voice shook with the passionate desire for the crowning triumph.

“If you’ll only not worry me,” murmured the prisoner; and the whisper came so laboriously and so low that both men were forced to bend their ears close to the scarcely moving lips; “if you will let me sleep and rest, and leave me in peace—”

“The peace of the grave, man,” retorted Chauvelin roughly; “if you will only speak. Where is Capet?”

“I cannot tell you; the way is long, the road—intricate.”

“Bah!”

“I’ll lead you to him, if you will give me rest.”

“We don’t want you to lead us anywhere,” growled Heron with a smothered curse; “tell us where Capet is; we’ll find him right enough.”

“I cannot explain; the way is intricate; the place off the beaten track, unknown except to me and my friends.”

Once more that shadow, which was so like the passing of the hand of Death, overspread the prisoner’s face; his head rolled back against the chair.

“He’ll die before he can speak,” muttered Chauvelin under his breath. “You usually are well provided with brandy, citizen Heron.”

The latter no longer demurred. He saw the danger as clearly as did his colleague. It had been hell’s own luck if the prisoner were to die now when he seemed ready to give in. He produced a flask from the pocket of his coat, and this he held to Blakeney’s lips.

“Beastly stuff,” murmured the latter feebly. “I think I’d sooner faint—than drink.”

“Capet? where is Capet?” reiterated Heron impatiently. “One—two—three hundred leagues from here.

I must let one of my friends know; he’ll communicate with the others; they must be prepared,” replied the prisoner slowly.

Heron uttered a blasphemous oath.

“Where is Capet? Tell us where Capet is, or—”

He was like a raging tiger that had thought to hold its prey and suddenly realised that it was being snatched from him. He raised his fist, and without doubt the next moment he would have silenced forever the lips that held the precious secret, but Chauvelin fortunately was quick enough to seize his wrist.

“Have a care, citizen,” he said peremptorily; “have a care! You called me a fool just now when you thought I had killed the prisoner. It is his secret we want first; his death can follow afterwards.”

“Yes, but not in this d—d hole,” murmured Blakeney.

“On the guillotine if you’ll speak,” cried Heron, whose exasperation was getting the better of his self-interest, “but if you’ll not speak then it shall be starvation in this hole—yes, starvation,” he growled, showing a row of large and uneven teeth like those of some mongrel cur, “for I’ll have that door walled in to-night, and not another living soul shall cross this threshold again until your flesh has rotted on your bones and the rats have had their fill of you.”

The prisoner raised his head slowly, a shiver shook him as if caused by ague, and his eyes, that appeared almost sightless, now looked with a strange glance of horror on his enemy.

“I’ll die in the open,” he whispered, “not in this d—d hole.”

“Then tell us where Capet is.”

“I cannot; I wish to God I could. But I’ll take you to him, I swear I will. I’ll make my friends give him up to you. Do you think that I would not tell you now, if I could.”

Heron, whose every instinct of tyranny revolted against this thwarting of his will, would have continued to heckle the prisoner even now, had not Chauvelin suddenly interposed with an authoritative gesture.

“You’ll gain nothing this way, citizen,” he said quietly; “the man’s mind is wandering; he is probably quite unable to give you clear directions at this moment.”

“What am I to do, then?” muttered the other roughly.

“He cannot live another twenty-four hours now, and would only grow more and more helpless as time went on.”

“Unless you relax your strict regime with him.”

“And if I do we’ll only prolong this situation indefinitely; and in the meanwhile how do we know that the brat is not being spirited away out of the country?”

The prisoner, with his head once more buried in his arms, had fallen into a kind of torpor, the only kind of sleep that the exhausted system would allow. With a brutal gesture Heron shook him by the shoulder.

“He,” he shouted, “none of that, you know. We have not settled the matter of young Capet yet.”

Then, as the prisoner made no movement, and the chief agent indulged in one of his favourite volleys of oaths, Chauvelin placed a peremptory hand on his colleague’s shoulder.

“I tell you, citizen, that this is no use,” he said firmly. “Unless you are prepared to give up all thoughts of finding Capet, you must try and curb your temper, and try diplomacy where force is sure to fail.”

“Diplomacy?” retorted the other with a sneer. “Bah! it served you well at Boulogne last autumn, did it not, citizen Chauvelin?”

“It has served me better now,” rejoined the other imperturbably. “You will own, citizen, that it is my diplomacy which has placed within your reach the ultimate hope of finding Capet.”

“H’m!” muttered the other, “you advised us to starve the prisoner. Are we any nearer to knowing his secret?”

“Yes. By a fortnight of weariness, of exhaustion and of starvation, you are nearer to it by the weakness of the man whom in his full strength you could never hope to conquer.”

“But if the cursed Englishman won’t speak, and in the meanwhile dies on my hands—”

“He won’t do that if you will accede to his wish. Give him some good food now, and let him sleep till dawn.”

“And at dawn he’ll defy me again. I believe now that he has some scheme in his mind, and means to play us a trick.”

“That, I imagine, is more than likely,” retorted Chauvelin dryly; “though,” he added with a contemptuous nod of the head directed at the huddled-up figure of his once brilliant enemy, “neither mind nor body seem to me to be in a sufficiently active state just now for hatching plot or intrigue; but even if—vaguely floating through his clouded mind—there has sprung some little scheme for evasion, I give you my word, citizen Heron, that you can thwart him completely, and gain all that you desire, if you will only follow my advice.”

There had always been a great amount of persuasive power in citizen Chauvelin, ex-envoy of the revolutionary Government of France at the Court of St. James, and that same persuasive eloquence did not fail now in its effect on the chief agent of the Committee of General Security. The latter was made of coarser stuff than his more brilliant colleague. Chauvelin was like a wily and sleek panther that is furtive in its movements, that will lure its prey, watch it, follow it with stealthy footsteps, and only pounce on it when it is least wary, whilst Heron was more like a raging bull that tosses its head in a blind, irresponsible fashion, rushes at an obstacle without gauging its resisting powers, and allows its victim to slip from beneath its weight through the very clumsiness and brutality of its assault.

Still Chauvelin had two heavy black marks against him—those of his failures at Calais and Boulogne. Heron, rendered cautious both by the deadly danger in which he stood and the sense of his own incompetence to deal with the present situation, tried to resist the other’s authority as well as his persuasion.

“Your advice was not of great use to citizen Collot last autumn at Boulogne,” he said, and spat on the ground by way of expressing both his independence and his contempt.

“Still, citizen Heron,” retorted Chauvelin with unruffled patience, “it is the best advice that you are likely to get in the present emergency. You have eyes to see, have you not? Look on your prisoner at this moment. Unless something is done, and at once, too, he will be past negotiating with in the next twenty-four hours; then what will follow?”

He put his thin hand once more on his colleague’s grubby coat-sleeve, he drew him closer to himself away from the vicinity of that huddled figure, that captive lion, wrapped in a torpid somnolence that looked already so like the last long sleep.

“What will follow, citizen Heron?” he reiterated, sinking his voice to a whisper; “sooner or later some meddlesome busybody who sits in the Assembly of the Convention will get wind that little Capet is no longer in the Temple prison, that a pauper child was substituted for him, and that you, citizen Heron, together with the commissaries in charge, have thus been fooling the nation and its representatives for over a fortnight. What will follow then, think you?”

And he made an expressive gesture with his outstretched fingers across his throat.

Heron found no other answer but blasphemy.

“I’ll make that cursed Englishman speak yet,” he said with a fierce oath.

“You cannot,” retorted Chauvelin decisively. “In his present state he is incapable of it, even if he would, which also is doubtful.”

“Ah! then you do think that he still means to cheat us?”

“Yes, I do. But I also know that he is no longer in a physical state to do it. No doubt he thinks that he is. A man of that type is sure to overvalue his own strength; but look at him, citizen Heron. Surely you must see that we have nothing to fear from him now.”

Heron now was like a voracious creature that has two victims lying ready for his gluttonous jaws. He was loath to let either of them go. He hated the very thought of seeing the Englishman being led out of this narrow cell, where he had kept a watchful eye over him night and day for a fortnight, satisfied that with every day, every hour, the chances of escape became more improbable and more rare; at the same time there was the possibility of the recapture of little Capet, a possibility which made Heron’s brain reel with the delightful vista of it, and which might never come about if the prisoner remained silent to the end.

“I wish I were quite sure,” he said sullenly, “that you were body and soul in accord with me.”

“I am in accord with you, citizen Heron,” rejoined the other earnestly—“body and soul in accord with you. Do you not believe that I hate this man—aye! hate him with a hatred ten thousand times more strong than yours? I want his death—Heaven or hell alone know how I long for that—but what I long for most is his lasting disgrace. For that I have worked, citizen Heron—for that I advised and helped you. When first you captured this man you wanted summarily to try him, to send him to the guillotine amidst the joy of the populace of Paris, and crowned with a splendid halo of martyrdom. That man, citizen Heron, would have baffled you, mocked you, and fooled you even on the steps of the scaffold. In the zenith of his strength and of insurmountable good luck you and all your myrmidons and all the assembled guard of Paris would have had no power over him. The day that you led him out of this cell in order to take him to trial or to the guillotine would have been that of your hopeless discomfiture. Having once walked out of this cell hale, hearty and alert, be the escort round him ever so strong, he never would have re-entered it again. Of that I am as convinced as that I am alive. I know the man; you don’t. Mine are not the only fingers through which he has slipped. Ask citizen Collot d’Herbois, ask Sergeant Bibot at the barrier of Menilmontant, ask General Santerre and his guards. They all have a tale to tell. Did I believe in God or the devil, I should also believe that this man has supernatural powers and a host of demons at his beck and call.”

“Yet you talk now of letting him walk out of this cell to-morrow?”

“He is a different man now, citizen Heron. On my advice you placed him on a regime that has counteracted the supernatural power by simple physical exhaustion, and driven to the four winds the host of demons who no doubt fled in the face of starvation.”

“If only I thought that the recapture of Capet was as vital to you as it is to me,” said Heron, still unconvinced.

“The capture of Capet is just as vital to me as it is to you,” rejoined Chauvelin earnestly, “if it is brought about through the instrumentality of the Englishman.”

He paused, looking intently on his colleague, whose shifty eyes encountered his own. Thus eye to eye the two men at last understood one another.

“Ah!” said Heron with a snort, “I think I understand.”

“I am sure that you do,” responded Chauvelin dryly. “The disgrace of this cursed Scarlet Pimpernel and his League is as vital to me, and more, as the capture of Capet is to you. That is why I showed you the way how to bring that meddlesome adventurer to his knees; that is why I will help you now both to find Capet and with his aid and to wreak what reprisals you like on him in the end.”

Heron before he spoke again cast one more look on the prisoner. The latter had not stirred; his face was hidden, but the hands, emaciated, nerveless and waxen, like those of the dead, told a more eloquent tale, mayhap, then than the eyes could do. The chief agent of the Committee of General Security walked deliberately round the table until he stood once more close beside the man from whom he longed with passionate ardour to wrest an all-important secret. With brutal, grimy hand he raised the head that lay, sunken and inert, against the table; with callous eyes he gazed attentively on the face that was then revealed to him, he looked on the waxen flesh, the hollow eyes, the bloodless lips; then he shrugged his wide shoulders, and with a laugh that surely must have caused joy in hell, he allowed the wearied head to fall back against the outstretched arms, and turned once again to his colleague.

“I think you are right, citizen Chauvelin,” he said; “there is not much supernatural power here. Let me hear your advice.”

CHAPTER XXXVII. CHAUVELIN’S ADVICE

Citizen Chauvelin had drawn his colleague with him to the end of the cell that was farthest away from the recess, and the table at which the prisoner was sitting.

Here the noise and hubbub that went on constantly in the guard room would effectually drown a whispered conversation. Chauvelin called to the sergeant to hand him a couple of chairs over the barrier. These he placed against the wall opposite the opening, and beckoning Heron to sit down, he did likewise, placing himself close to his colleague.

From where the two men now sat they could see both into the guard-room opposite them and into the recess at the furthermost end of the cell.

“First of all,” began Chauvelin after a while, and sinking his voice to a whisper, “let me understand you thoroughly, citizen Heron. Do you want the death of the Englishman, either to-day or to-morrow, either in this prison or on the guillotine? For that now is easy of accomplishment; or do you want, above all, to get hold of little Capet?”

“It is Capet I want,” growled Heron savagely under his breath. “Capet! Capet! My own neck is dependent on my finding Capet. Curse you, have I not told you that clearly enough?”

“You have told it me very clearly, citizen Heron; but I wished to make assurance doubly sure, and also make you understand that I, too, want the Englishman to betray little Capet into your hands. I want that more even than I do his death.”

“Then in the name of hell, citizen, give me your advice.”

“My advice to you, citizen Heron, is this: Give your prisoner now just a sufficiency of food to revive him—he will have had a few moments’ sleep—and when he has eaten, and, mayhap, drunk a glass of wine, he will, no doubt, feel a recrudescence of strength, then give him pen and ink and paper. He must, as he says, write to one of his followers, who, in his turn, I suppose, will communicate with the others, bidding them to be prepared to deliver up little Capet to us; the letter must make it clear to that crowd of English gentlemen that their beloved chief is giving up the uncrowned King of France to us in exchange for his own safety. But I think you will agree with me, citizen Heron, that it would not be over-prudent on our part to allow that same gallant crowd to be forewarned too soon of the pro-posed doings of their chief. Therefore, I think, we’ll explain to the prisoner that his follower, whom he will first apprise of his intentions, shall start with us to-morrow on our expedition, and accompany us until its last stage, when, if it is found necessary, he may be sent on ahead, strongly escorted of course, and with personal messages from the gallant Scarlet Pimpernel to the members of his League.”

“What will be the good of that?” broke in Heron viciously. “Do you want one of his accursed followers to be ready to give him a helping hand on the way if he tries to slip through our fingers?

“Patience, patience, my good Heron!” rejoined Chauvelin with a placid smile. “Hear me out to the end. Time is precious. You shall offer what criticism you will when I have finished, but not before.”

“Go on, then. I listen.”

“I am not only proposing that one member of the Scarlet Pimpernel League shall accompany us to-morrow,” continued Chauvelin, “but I would also force the prisoner’s wife—Marguerite Blakeney—to follow in our train.”

“A woman? Bah! What for?”

“I will tell you the reason of this presently. In her case I should not let the prisoner know beforehand that she too will form a part of our expedition. Let this come as a pleasing surprise for him. She could join us on our way out of Paris.”

“How will you get hold of her?”

“Easily enough. I know where to find her. I traced her myself a few days ago to a house in the Rue de Charonne, and she is not likely to have gone away from Paris while her husband was at the Conciergerie. But this is a digression, let me proceed more consecutively. The letter, as I have said, being written to-night by the prisoner to one of his followers, I will myself see that it is delivered into the right hands. You, citizen Heron, will in the meanwhile make all arrangements for the journey. We ought to start at dawn, and we ought to be prepared, especially during the first fifty leagues of the way, against organised attack in case the Englishman leads us into an ambush.”

“Yes. He might even do that, curse him!” muttered Heron.

“He might, but it is unlikely. Still it is best to be prepared. Take a strong escort, citizen, say twenty or thirty men, picked and trained soldiers who would make short work of civilians, however well-armed they might be. There are twenty members—including the chief—in that Scarlet Pimpernel League, and I do not quite see how from this cell the prisoner could organise an ambuscade against us at a given time. Anyhow, that is a matter for you to decide. I have still to place before you a scheme which is a measure of safety for ourselves and our men against ambush as well as against trickery, and which I feel sure you will pronounce quite adequate.”

“Let me hear it, then!”

“The prisoner will have to travel by coach, of course. You can travel with him, if you like, and put him in irons, and thus avert all chances of his escaping on the road. But”—and here Chauvelin made a long pause, which had the effect of holding his colleague’s attention still more closely—“remember that we shall have his wife and one of his friends with us. Before we finally leave Paris tomorrow we will explain to the prisoner that at the first attempt to escape on his part, at the slightest suspicion that he has tricked us for his own ends or is leading us into an ambush—at the slightest suspicion, I say—you, citizen Heron, will order his friend first, and then Marguerite Blakeney herself, to be summarily shot before his eyes.”

Heron gave a long, low whistle. Instinctively he threw a furtive, backward glance at the prisoner, then he raised his shifty eyes to his colleague.

There was unbounded admiration expressed in them. One blackguard had met another—a greater one than himself—and was proud to acknowledge him as his master.

“By Lucifer, citizen Chauvelin,” he said at last, “I should never have thought of such a thing myself.”

Chauvelin put up his hand with a gesture of self-deprecation.

“I certainly think that measure ought to be adequate,” he said with a gentle air of assumed modesty, “unless you would prefer to arrest the woman and lodge her here, keeping her here as an hostage.”

“No, no!” said Heron with a gruff laugh; “that idea does not appeal to me nearly so much as the other. I should not feel so secure on the way.... I should always be thinking that that cursed woman had been allowed to escape.... No! no! I would rather keep her under my own eye—just as you suggest, citizen Chauvelin… and under the prisoner’s, too,” he added with a coarse jest. “If he did not actually see her, he might be more ready to try and save himself at her expense. But, of course, he could not see her shot before his eyes. It is a perfect plan, citizen, and does you infinite credit; and if the Englishman tricked us,” he concluded with a fierce and savage oath, “and we did not find Capet at the end of the journey, I would gladly strangle his wife and his friend with my own hands.”

“A satisfaction which I would not begrudge you, citizen,” said Chauvelin dryly. “Perhaps you are right… the woman had best be kept under your own eye… the prisoner will never risk her safety on that, I would stake my life. We’ll deliver our final ‘either—or’ the moment that she has joined our party, and before we start further on our way. Now, citizen Heron, you have heard my advice; are you prepared to follow it?”

“To the last letter,” replied the other.

And their two hands met in a grasp of mutual understanding—two hands already indelibly stained with much innocent blood, more deeply stained now with seventeen past days of inhumanity and miserable treachery to come.

CHAPTER XXXVIII. CAPITULATION

What occurred within the inner cell of the Conciergerie prison within the next half-hour of that 16th day of Pluviose in the year II of the Republic is, perhaps, too well known to history to need or bear overfull repetition.

Chroniclers intimate with the inner history of those infamous days have told us how the chief agent of the Committee of General Security gave orders one hour after midnight that hot soup, white bread and wine be served to the prisoner, who for close on fourteen days previously had been kept on short rations of black bread and water; the sergeant in charge of the guard-room watch for the night also received strict orders that that same prisoner was on no account to be disturbed until the hour of six in the morning, when he was to be served with anything in the way of breakfast that he might fancy.

All this we know, and also that citizen Heron, having given all necessary orders for the morning’s expedition, returned to the Conciergerie, and found his colleague Chauvelin waiting for him in the guard-room.

“Well?” he asked with febrile impatience—“the prisoner?”

“He seems better and stronger,” replied Chauvelin.

“Not too well, I hope?”

“No, no, only just well enough.”

“You have seen him—since his supper?”

“Only from the doorway. It seems he ate and drank hardly at all, and the sergeant had some difficulty in keeping him awake until you came.”

“Well, now for the letter,” concluded Heron with the same marked feverishness of manner which sat so curiously on his uncouth personality. “Pen, ink and paper, sergeant!” he commanded.

“On the table, in the prisoner’s cell, citizen,” replied the sergeant.

He preceded the two citizens across the guard-room to the doorway, and raised for them the iron bar, lowering it back after them.