At the top of the Rue Berthier the party halted. On ahead--some two
hundred metres farther--Yvonne Lebeau's little figure, with her ragged
skirt pulled over her head and her bare feet pattering in the mud, was
seen crossing one of those intermittent patches of light formed by
occasional flickering street lamps, and then was swallowed up once more
by the inky blackness beyond.
The Rue Berthier is a long, narrow, ill-paved and ill-lighted street,
composed of low and irregular houses, which abut on the line of
fortifications at the back, and are therefore absolutely inaccessible
save from the front.
Midway down the street a derelict house rears ghostly debris of roofs
and chimney-stacks upward to the sky. A tiny square of yellow light,
blinking like a giant eye through a curtainless window, pierced the wall
of the house. Roger pointed to that light.
"That," he said, "is the quarry where our fox has run to earth."
No one said anything; but the dank night air seemed suddenly alive with
all the passions of hate let loose by thirty beating hearts.
The Scarlet Pimpernel, who had tricked them, mocked them, fooled them so
often, was there, not two hundred metres away; and they were thirty to
one, and all determined and desperate.
The darkness was intense.
Silently now the party approached the house, then again they halted,
within sixty metres of it.
"Hist!"
The whisper could scarce be heard, so low was it, like the sighing of
the wind through a misty veil.
"Who is it?" came in quick challenge from Roger.
"I--Yvonne Lebeau!"
"Is he there?" was the eager whispered query.
"Not yet. But he may come at any moment. If he saw a crowd round the
house, mayhap he would not come."
"He cannot see a crowd. The night is as dark as pitch."
"He can see in the darkest night," and the girl's voice sank to an awed
whisper, "and he can hear through a stone wall."
Instinctively, Roger shuddered. The superstitious fear which the
mysterious personality of the Scarlet Pimpernel evoked in the heart of
every Terrorist had suddenly seized this man in its grip.
Try as he would, he did not feel as valiant as he had done when first he
emerged at the head of his party from under the portico of the
Cordeliers Club, and it was with none too steady a voice that he ordered
the girl roughly back to the house. Then he turned once more to his men.
The plan of action had been decided on in the Club, under the presidency
of Robespierre; it only remained to carry the plans through with
success.
From the side of the fortifications there was, of course, nothing to
fear. In accordance with military regulations, the walls of the houses
there rose sheer from the ground without doors or windows, whilst the
broken-down parapets and dilapidated roofs towered forty feet above the
ground.
The derelict itself was one of a row of houses, some inhabited, others
quite abandoned. It was the front of that row of houses, therefore, that
had to be kept in view. Marshalled by Roger, the men flattened their
meagre bodies against the walls of the houses opposite, and after that
there was nothing to do but wait.
To wait in the darkness of the night, with a thin, icy rain soaking
through ragged shirts and tattered breeches, with bare feet frozen by
the mud of the road--to wait in silence while turbulent hearts beat
well-nigh to bursting--to wait for food whilst hunger gnaws the
bowels--to wait for drink whilst the parched tongue cleaves to the roof
of the mouth--to wait for revenge whilst the hours roll slowly by and
the cries of the darkened city are stilled one by one!
Once--when a distant bell tolled the hour of ten--a loud prolonged
laugh, almost impudent in its suggestion of merry insouciance, echoed
through the weird silence of the night.
Roger felt that the man nearest to him shivered at that sound, and he
heard a volley or two of muttered oaths.
"The fox seems somewhere near," he whispered. "Come within. We'll wait
for him inside his hole."
He led the way across the street, some of the men following him.
The door of the derelict house had been left on the latch. Roger pushed
it open.
Silence and gloom here reigned supreme; utter darkness, too, save for a
narrow streak of light which edged the framework of a door on the right.
Not a sound stirred the quietude of this miserable hovel, only the
creaking of boards beneath the men's feet as they entered.
Roger crossed the passage and opened the door on the right. His friends
pressed closely round to him and peeped over his shoulder into the room
beyond.
A guttering piece of tallow candle, fixed to an old tin pot, stood in
the middle of the floor, and its feeble, flickering light only served to
accentuate the darkness that lay beyond its range. One or two rickety
chairs and a rough deal table showed vaguely in the gloom, and in the
far corner of the room there lay a bundle of what looked like heaped-up
rags, but from which there now emerged the sound of heavy breathing and
also a little cry of fear.
"Yvonne," came in feeble, querulous accents from that same bundle of
wretchedness, "are these the English milors come back at last?"
"No, no, father," was the quick whispered reply.
Roger swore a loud oath, and two puny voices began to whimper piteously.
"It strikes me the wench has been fooling us," muttered one of the men
savagely.
The girl had struggled to her feet. She crouched in the darkness, and
two little boys, half-naked and shivering, were clinging to her skirts.
The rest of the human bundle seemed to consist of an oldish man, with
long, gaunt legs and arms blue with the cold. He turned vague, wide-open
eyes in the direction whence had come the harsh voices.
"Are they friends, Yvonne?" he asked anxiously.
The girl did her best to reassure him.
"Yes, yes, father," she whispered close to his ear, her voice scarce
above her breath; "they are good citizens who hoped to find the English
milor here. They are disappointed that he has not yet come."
"Ah! but he will come, of a surety," said the old man in that querulous
voice of his. "He left his beautiful clothes here this morning, and
surely he will come to fetch them." And his long, thin hand pointed
towards a distant corner of the room.
Roger and his friends, looking to where he was pointing, saw a parcel of
clothes, neatly folded, lying on one of the chairs. Like so many wild
cats snarling at sight of prey, they threw themselves upon those
clothes, tearing them out from one another's hands, turning them over
and over as if to force the cloth and satin to yield up the secret that
lay within their folds.
In the skirmish a scrap of paper fluttered to the ground. Roger seized
it with avidity, and, crouching on the floor, smoothed the paper out
against his knee.
It contained a few hastily scrawled words, and by the feeble light of
the fast-dying candle Roger spelt them out laboriously:
"If the finder of these clothes will take them to the cross-roads
opposite the foot-bridge which leads straight to Courbevoie, and will do
so before the clock of Courbevoie Church has struck the hour of
midnight, he will be rewarded with the sum of five hundred francs."
"There is something more, citizen Roger," said a raucous voice close to
his ear.
"Look! Look, citizen--in the bottom corner of the paper!"
"The signature."
"A scrawl done in red," said Roger, trying to decipher it.
"It looks like a small flower."
"That accursed Scarlet Pimpernel!"
And even as he spoke the guttering tallow candle, swaying in its socket,
suddenly went out with a loud splutter and a sizzle that echoed through
the desolate room like the mocking laugh of ghouls.