Silence reigned in the low-raftered room on the ground floor of the
house in the Rue Dauphine.
Citizen Robespierre, chairman of the Cordeliers Club, the most
bloodthirsty, most Evolutionary club of France, had just re-entered the
room.
He walked up to the centre table, and through the close atmosphere,
thick with tobacco smoke, he looked round on his assembled friends.
"We have got him," he said at last curtly.
"Got him! Whom?" came in hoarse cries from every corner of the room.
"That Englishman," replied the demagogue, "the Scarlet Pimpernel!"
A prolonged shout rose in response--a shout not unlike that of a caged
herd of hungry wild beasts to whom a succulent morsel of flesh has
unexpectedly been thrown.
"Where is he?" "Where did you get him?" "Alive or dead?" And many more
questions such as these were hurled at the speaker from every side.
Robespierre, calm, impassive, immaculately neat in his tightly fitting
coat, his smart breeches, and his lace cravat, waited awhile until the
din had somewhat subsided. Then he said calmly:
"The Scarlet Pimpernel is in hiding in one of the derelict houses in the
Rue Berthier."
Snarls of derision as vigorous as the former shouts of triumph drowned
the rest of his speech.
"Bah! How often has that cursed Scarlet Pimpernel been said to be alone
in a lonely house? Citizen Chauvelin has had him at his mercy several
times in lonely houses."
And the speaker, a short, thick-set man with sparse black hair plastered
over a greasy forehead, his shirt open at the neck, revealing a powerful
chest and rough, hairy skin, spat in ostentatious contempt upon the
floor.
"Therefore will we not boast of his capture yet, citizen Roger," resumed
Robespierre imperturbably. "I tell you where the Englishman is. Do you
look to it that he does not escape."
The heat in the room had become intolerable. From the grimy ceiling an
oil-lamp, flickering low, threw lurid, ruddy lights on tricolour
cockades, on hands that seemed red with the blood of innocent victims of
lust and hate, and on faces glowing with desire and with anticipated
savage triumph.
"Who is the informer?" asked Roger at last.
"A girl," replied Robespierre curtly. "Yvonne Lebeau, by name; she and
her family live by begging. There are a blind father and two boys; they
herd together at night in the derelict house in the Rue Berthier. Five
Englishmen have been in hiding there these past few days. One of them is
their leader. The girl believes him to be the Scarlet Pimpernel."
"Why has she not spoken of this before?" muttered one of the crowd, with
some scepticism.
"Frightened, I suppose. Or the Englishman paid her to hold her tongue."
"Where is the girl now?"
"I am sending her straight home, a little ahead of us. Her presence
should reassure the Englishman whilst we make ready to surround the
house. In the meanwhile, I have sent special messengers to every gate of
Paris with strict orders to the guard not to allow anyone out of the
city until further orders from the Committee of Public Safety. And now,"
he added, throwing back his head with a gesture of proud challenge,
"citizens, which of you will go man-hunting to-night?"
This time the strident roar of savage exultation was loud and deep
enough to shake the flickering lamp upon its chain.
A brief discussion of plans followed, and Roger--he with the broad,
hairy chest and that gleam of hatred for ever lurking in his deep-set,
shifty eyes--was chosen the leader of the party.
Thirty determined and well-armed patriots set out against one man, who
mayhap had supernatural powers. There would, no doubt, be some
aristocrats, too, in hiding in the derelict house--the girl Lebeau, it
seems, had spoken of a woman and two children. Bah! These would not
count. It would be thirty to one, so let the Scarlet Pimpernel look to
himself.
From the towers of Notre Dame the big bell struck the hour of six, as
thirty men in ragged shirts and torn breeches, shivering beneath a cold
November drizzle, began slowly to wend their way towards the Rue
Berthier.
They walked on in silence, not heeding the cold or the rain, but with
eyes fixed in the direction of their goal, and nostrils quivering in the
evening air with the distant scent of blood.