IV

There is nothing now in the whole countryside quite so desolate and

forlorn as the chateau of Montorgueil, with its once magnificent park,

now overgrown with weeds, its encircling walls broken down, its terraces

devastated, and its stately gates rusty and torn.

Just by the side of what was known in happier times as the stable gate

there stands a hollow tree. It is not inside the park, but just outside,

and shelters the narrow lane, which skirts the park walls, against the

blaze of the afternoon sun.

Its beneficent shade is a favourite spot for an afternoon siesta, for

there is a bit of green sward under the tree, and all along the side of

the road. But as the shades of evening gather in, the lane is usually

deserted, shunned by the neighbouring peasantry on account of its eerie

loneliness, so different to the former bustle which used to reign around

the park gates when M. le Marquis and his family were still in

residence. Nor does the lane lead anywhere, for it is a mere loop which

gives on the main road at either end.

Henri de Montorgueil chose a peculiarly dark night in mid-September for

one of his periodical visits to the hollow-tree. It was close on nine

o'clock when he passed stealthily down the lane, keeping close to the

park wall. A soft rain was falling, the first since the prolonged

drought, and though it made the road heavy and slippery in places, it

helped to deaden the sound of the young man's furtive footsteps. The

air, except for the patter of the rain, was absolutely still. Henri de

Montorgueil paused from time to time, with neck craned forward, every

sense on the alert, listening, like any poor, hunted beast, for the

slightest sound which might betray the approach of danger.

As many a time before, he reached the hollow tree in safety, felt for

and found in the usual place the letter which the unfortunate girl

Lucile had written to him. Then, with it in his hand, he turned to the

stable gate. It had long since ceased to be kept locked and barred.

Pillaged and ransacked by order of the Committee of Public Safety, there

was nothing left inside the park walls worth keeping under lock and key.

Henri slipped stealthily through the gates and made his way along the

drive. Every stone, every nook and cranny of his former home was

familiar to him, and anon he turned into a shed where in former times

wheelbarrows and garden tools were wont to be kept. Now it was full of

debris, lumber of every sort. A more safe or secluded spot could not be

imagined. Henri crouched in the furthermost corner of the shed. Then

from his belt he detached a small dark lanthorn, opened its shutter, and

with the aid of the tiny, dim light read the contents of the letter. For

a long while after that he remained quite still, as still as a man who

has received a stunning blow on the head and has partly lost

consciousness. The blow was indeed a staggering one. Lucile Clamette,

with the invincible power of her own helplessness, was demanding the

surrender of a weapon which had been a safeguard for the Montorgueils

all this while. The papers which compromised a number of influential

members of the Committee of Public Safety had been the most perfect arms

of defence against persecution and spoliation.

And now these were to be given up: Oh! there could be no question of

that. Even before consulting with his father, Henri knew that the papers

would have to be given up. They were clever, those revolutionaries. The

thought of holding innocent children as hostages could only have

originated in minds attuned to the villainies of devils. But it was

unthinkable that the children should suffer.

After a while the young man roused himself from the torpor into which

the suddenness of this awful blow had plunged him. By the light of the

lanthorn he began to write upon a sheet of paper which he had torn from

his pocket-book.

"MY DEAR LUCILE," he wrote, "As you say, our debt to your father and to

you all never could be adequately repaid. You and the children shall

never suffer whilst we have the power to save you. You will find the

papers in the receptacle you know of inside the chimney of what used to

be my mother's boudoir. You will find the receptacle unlocked. One day

before the term you name I myself will place the papers there for you.

With them, my father and I do give up our lives to save you and the

little ones from the persecution of those fiends. May the good God guard

you all."

He signed the letter with his initials, H. de M. Then he crept back to

the gate and dropped the message into the hollow of the tree.

A quarter of an hour later Henri de Montorgueil was wending his way back

to the hiding place which had sheltered him and his father for so long.

Silence and darkness then held undisputed sway once more around the

hollow tree. Even the rain had ceased its gentle pattering. Anon from

far away came the sound of a church bell striking the hour of ten. Then

nothing more.

A few more minutes of absolute silence, then something dark and furtive

began to move out of the long grass which bordered the

roadside--something that in movement was almost like a snake. It dragged

itself along close to the ground, making no sound as it moved. Soon it

reached the hollow tree, rose to the height of a man and flattened

itself against the tree-trunk. Then it put out a hand, felt for the

hollow receptacle and groped for the missive which Henri de Montorgueil

had dropped in there a while ago.

The next moment a tiny ray of light gleamed through the darkness like a

star. A small, almost fragile, figure of a man, dressed in the

mud-stained clothes of a country yokel, had turned up the shutter of a

small lanthorn. By its flickering light he deciphered the letter which

Henri de Montorgueil had written to Lucile Clamette.

"One day before the term you name I myself will place the papers there

for you."

A sigh of satisfaction, quickly suppressed, came through his thin,

colourless lips, and the light of the lanthorn caught the flash of

triumph in his pale, inscrutable eyes.

Then the light was extinguished. Impenetrable darkness swallowed up that

slender, mysterious figure again.

V

Six days had gone by since Chauvelin had delivered his cruel

"either--or" to poor little Lucile Clamette; three since he had found

Henri de Montorgueil's reply to the girl's appeal in the hollow of the

tree. Since then he had made a careful investigation of the chateau, and

soon was able to settle it in his own mind as to which room had been

Madame la Marquise's boudoir in the past. It was a small apartment,

having direct access on the first landing of the staircase, and the one

window gave on the rose garden at the back of the house. Inside the

monumental hearth, at an arm's length up the wide chimney, a receptacle

had been contrived in the brickwork, with a small iron door which opened

and closed with a secret spring. Chauvelin, whom his nefarious calling

had rendered proficient in such matters, had soon mastered the workings

of that spring. He could now open and close the iron door at will.

Up to a late hour on the sixth night of this weary waiting, the

receptacle inside the chimney was still empty. That night Chauvelin had

determined to spend at the chateau. He could not have rested elsewhere.

Even his colleague Lebel could not know what the possession of those

papers would mean to the discredited agent of the Committee of Public

Safety. With them in his hands, he could demand rehabilitation, and

could purchase immunity from those sneers which had been so galling to

his arrogant soul--sneers which had become more and more marked, more

and more unendurable, and more and more menacing, as he piled up failure

on failure with every encounter with the Scarlet Pimpernel.

Immunity and rehabilitation! This would mean that he could once more

measure his wits and his power with that audacious enemy who had brought

about his downfall.

"In the name of Satan, bring us those papers!" Robespierre himself had

cried with unwonted passion, ere he sent him out on this important

mission. "We none of us could stand the scandal of such disclosures. It

would mean absolute ruin for us all."

And Chauvelin that night, as soon as the shades of evening had drawn in,

took up his stand in the chateau, in the small inner room which was

contiguous to the boudoir.

Here he sat, beside the open window, for hour upon hour, his every sense

on the alert, listening for the first footfall upon the gravel path

below. Though the hours went by leaden-footed, he was neither excited

nor anxious. The Clamette family was such a precious hostage that the

Montorgueils were bound to comply with Lucile's demand for the papers by

every dictate of honour and of humanity.

"While we have those people in our power," Chauvelin had reiterated to

himself more than once during the course of his long vigil, "even that

meddlesome Scarlet Pimpernel can do nothing to save those cursed

Montorgueils."

The night was dark and still. Not a breath of air stirred the branches

of the trees or the shrubberies in the park; any footsteps, however

wary, must echo through that perfect and absolute silence. Chauvelin's

keen, pale eyes tried to pierce the gloom in the direction whence in all

probability the aristo would come. Vaguely he wondered if it would be

Henri de Montorgueil or the old Marquis himself who would bring the

papers.

"Bah! whichever one it is," he muttered, "we can easily get the other,

once those abominable papers are in our hands. And even if both the

aristos escape," he added mentally, "'tis no matter, once we have the

papers."

Anon, far away a distant church bell struck the midnight hour. The

stillness of the air had become oppressive. A kind of torpor born of

intense fatigue lulled the Terrorist's senses to somnolence. His head

fell forward on his breast....