That same forenoon, on his return from the Abbaye and the depot,
Chauvelin found that a visitor was waiting for him. A woman, who gave
her name as Jeannette Marechal, desired to speak with the citizen
Representative. Chauvelin knew the woman as his colleague Marat's
maid-of-all-work, and he gave orders that she should be admitted at
once.
Jeannette Marechal, tearful and not a little frightened, assured the
citizen Representative that her errand was urgent. Her late employer had
so few friends; she did not know to whom to turn until she bethought
herself of citizen Chauvelin. It took him some little time to
disentangle the tangible facts out of the woman's voluble narrative. At
first the words: "Child ... Chemin de Pantin ... Leridan," were only a
medley of sounds which conveyed no meaning to his ear. But when occasion
demanded, citizen Chauvelin was capable of infinite patience. Gradually
he understood what the woman was driving at.
"The child, citizen!" she reiterated excitedly. "What's to be done about
him? I know that citizen Marat would have wished--"
"Never mind now what citizen Marat would have wished," Chauvelin broke
in quietly. "Tell me first who this child is."
"I do not know, citizen," she replied.
"How do you mean, you do not know? Then I pray you, citizeness, what is
all this pother about?"
"About the child, citizen," reiterated Jeannette obstinately.
"What child?"
"The child whom citizen Marat adopted last year and kept at that awful
house on the Chemin de Pantin."
"I did not know citizen Marat had adopted a child," remarked Chauvelin
thoughtfully.
"No one knew," she rejoined. "Not even citizeness Evrard. I was the only
one who knew. I had to go and see the child once every month. It was a
wretched, miserable brat," the woman went on, her shrivelled old breast
vaguely stirred, mayhap, by some atrophied feeling of motherhood. "More
than half-starved ... and the look in its eyes, citizen! It was enough
to make you cry! I could see by his poor little emaciated body and his
nice little hands and feet that he ought never to have been put in that
awful house, where--"
She paused, and that quick look of furtive terror, which was so often to
be met with in the eyes of the timid these days, crept into her wrinkled
face.
"Well, citizeness," Chauvelin rejoined quietly, "why don't you proceed?
That awful house, you were saying. Where and what is that awful house of
which you speak?"
"The place kept by citizen Leridan, just by Bassin de l'Ourcq," the
woman murmured. "You know it, citizen."
Chauvelin nodded. He was beginning to understand.
"Well, now, tell me," he said, with that bland patience which had so oft
served him in good stead in his unavowable profession. "Tell me. Last
year citizen Marat adopted--we'll say adopted--a child, whom he placed
in the Leridans' house on the Pantin road. Is that correct?"
"That is just how it is, citizen. And I--"
"One moment," he broke in somewhat more sternly, as the woman's
garrulity was getting on his nerves. "As you say, I know the Leridans'
house. I have had cause to send children there myself. Children of
aristos or of fat bourgeois, whom it was our duty to turn into good
citizens. They are not pampered there, I imagine," he went on drily;
"and if citizen Marat sent his--er--adopted son there, it was not with a
view to having him brought up as an aristo, what?"
"The child was not to be brought up at all," the woman said gruffly. "I
have often heard citizen Marat say that he hoped the brat would prove a
thief when he grew up, and would take to alcoholism like a duck takes to
water."
"And you know nothing of the child's parents?"
"Nothing, citizen. I had to go to Pantin once a month and have a look at
him and report to citizen Marat. But I always had the same tale to tell.
The child was looking more and more like a young reprobate every time I
saw him."
"Did citizen Marat pay the Leridans for keeping the child?"
"Oh, no, citizen! The Leridans make a trade of the children by sending
them out to beg. But this one was not to be allowed out yet. Citizen
Marat's orders were very stern, and he was wont to terrify the Leridans
with awful threats of the guillotine if they ever allowed the child out
of their sight."
Chauvelin sat silent for a while. A ray of light had traversed the dark
and tortuous ways of his subtle brain. While he mused the woman became
impatient. She continued to talk on with the volubility peculiar to her
kind. He paid no heed to her, until one phrase struck his ear.
"So now," Jeannette Marechal was saying, "I don't know what to do. The
ring has disappeared, and the Leridans are suspicious."
"The ring?" queried Chauvelin curtly. "What ring?"
"As I was telling you, citizen," she replied querulously, "when I went
to see the child, the citizen Marat always gave me this ring to show to
the Leridans. Without I brought the ring they would not admit me inside
their door. They were so terrified with all the citizen's threats of the
guillotine."
"And now you say the ring has disappeared. Since when?"
"Well, citizen," replied Jeannette blandly, "since you took poor Paul
Mole into custody."
"What do you mean?" Chauvelin riposted. "What had Paul Mole to do with
the child and the ring?"
"Only this, citizen, that he was to have gone to Pantin last night
instead of me. And thankful I was not to have to go. Citizen Marat gave
the ring to Mole, I suppose. I know he intended to give it to him. He
spoke to me about it just before that execrable woman came and murdered
him. Anyway, the ring has gone and Mole too. So I imagine that Mole has
the ring and--"
"That's enough!" Chauvelin broke in roughly. "You can go!"
"But, citizen--"
"You can go, I said," he reiterated sharply. "The matter of the child
and the Leridans and the ring no longer concerns you. You understand?"
"Y--y--yes, citizen," murmured Jeannette, vaguely terrified.
And of a truth the change in citizen Chauvelin's demeanour was enough to
scare any timid creature. Not that he raved or ranted or screamed. Those
were not his ways. He still sat beside his desk as he had done before,
and his slender hand, so like the talons of a vulture, was clenched upon
the arm of his chair. But there was such a look of inward fury and of
triumph in his pale, deep-set eyes, such lines of cruelty around his
thin, closed lips, that Jeannette Marechal, even with the picture before
her mind of Jean Paul Marat in his maddest moods, fled, with the
unreasoning terror of her kind, before the sternly controlled, fierce
passion of this man.
Chauvelin never noticed that she went. He sat for a long time, silent
and immovable. Now he understood. Thank all the Powers of Hate and
Revenge, no thought of disappointment was destined to embitter the
overflowing cup of his triumph. He had not only brought his arch-enemy
to his knees, but had foiled one of his audacious ventures. How clear
the whole thing was! The false Paul Mole, the newly acquired menial in
the household of Marat, had wormed himself into the confidence of his
employer in order to wrest from him the secret of the aristo's child.
Bravo! bravo! my gallant Scarlet Pimpernel! Chauvelin now could see it
all. Tragedies such as that which had placed an aristo's child in the
power of a cunning demon like Marat were not rare these days, and
Chauvelin had been fitted by nature and by temperament to understand and
appreciate an execrable monster of the type of Jean Paul Marat.
And Paul Mole, the grimy, degraded servant of the indigent demagogue,
the loathsome mask which hid the fastidious personality of Sir Percy
Blakeney, had made a final and desperate effort to possess himself of
the ring which would deliver the child into his power. Now, having
failed in his machinations, he was safe under lock and key--guarded on
sight. The next twenty-four hours would see him unmasked, awaiting his
trial and condemnation under the scathing indictment prepared by
Fouquier-Tinville, the unerring Public Prosecutor. The day after that,
the tumbril and the guillotine for that execrable English spy, and the
boundless sense of satisfaction that his last intrigue had aborted in
such a signal and miserable manner.
Of a truth Chauvelin at this hour had every cause to be thankful, and it
was with a light heart that he set out to interview the Leridans.