What had happened was this:
Tournefort, one of the ablest of the many sleuth-hounds employed by the
Committee of Public Safety, was out during that awful storm on the night
of the twenty-fifth. The rain came down as if it had been poured out of
buckets, and Tournefort took shelter under the portico of a tall,
dilapidated-looking house somewhere at the back of St. Lazare. The night
was, of course, pitch dark, and the howling of the wind and beating of
the rain effectually drowned every other sound.
Tournefort, chilled to the marrow, had at first cowered in the angle of
the door, as far away from the draught as he could. But presently he
spied the glimmer of a tiny light some little way up on his left, and
taking this to come from the concierge's lodge, he went cautiously along
the passage intending to ask for better shelter against the fury of the
elements than the rickety front door afforded.
Tournefort, you must remember, was always on the best terms with every
concierge in Paris. They were, as it were, his subordinates; without
their help he never could have carried on his unavowable profession
quite so successfully. And they, in their turn, found it to their
advantage to earn the good-will of that army of spies, which the
Revolutionary Government kept in its service, for the tracking down of
all those unfortunates who had not given complete adhesion to their
tyrannical and murderous policy.
Therefore, in this instance, Tournefort felt no hesitation in claiming
the hospitality of the concierge of the squalid house wherein he found
himself. He went boldly up to the lodge. His hand was already on the
latch, when certain sounds which proceeded from the interior of the
lodge caused him to pause and to bend his ear in order to listen. It was
Tournefort's metier to listen. What had arrested his attention was the
sound of a man's voice, saying in a tone of deep respect:
"Bien, Madame la Comtesse, we'll do our best."
No wonder that the servant of the Committee of Public Safety remained at
attention, no longer thought of the storm or felt the cold blast
chilling him to the marrow. Here was a wholly unexpected piece of good
luck. "Madame la Comtesse!" Peste! There were not many such left in
Paris these days. Unfortunately, the tempest of the wind and the rain
made such a din that it was difficult to catch every sound which came
from the interior of the lodge. All that Tournefort caught definitely
were a few fragments of conversation.
"My good M. Bertin ..." came at one time from a woman's voice. "Truly I
do not know why you should do all this for me."
And then again: "All I possess in the world now are my diamonds. They
alone stand between my children and utter destitution."
The man's voice seemed all the time to be saying something that sounded
cheerful and encouraging. But his voice came only as a vague murmur to
the listener's ears. Presently, however, there came a word which set his
pulses tingling. Madame said something about "Gentilly," and directly
afterwards: "You will have to be very careful, my dear M. Bertin. The
chateau, I feel sure, is being watched."
Tournefort could scarce repress a cry of joy. "Gentilly? Madame la
Comtesse? The chateau?" Why, of course, he held all the necessary
threads already. The ci-devant Comte de Sucy--a pestilential aristo if
ever there was one!--had been sent to the guillotine less than a
fortnight ago. His chateau, situated just outside Gentilly, stood empty,
it having been given out that the widow Sucy and her two children had
escaped to England. Well! she had not gone apparently, for here she was,
in the lodge of the concierge of a mean house in one of the desolate
quarters of Paris, begging some traitor to find her diamonds for her,
which she had obviously left concealed inside the chateau. What a haul
for Tournefort! What commendation from his superiors! The chances of a
speedy promotion were indeed glorious now! He blessed the storm and the
rain which had driven him for shelter to this house, where a poisonous
plot was being hatched to rob the people of valuable property, and to
aid a few more of those abominable aristos in cheating the guillotine of
their traitorous heads.
He listened for a while longer, in order to get all the information that
he could on the subject of the diamonds, because he knew by experience
that those perfidious aristos, once they were under arrest, would sooner
bite out their tongues than reveal anything that might be of service to
the Government of the people. But he learned little else. Nothing was
revealed of where Madame la Comtesse was in hiding, or how the diamonds
were to be disposed of once they were found. Tournefort would have given
much to have at least one of his colleagues with him. As it was, he
would be forced to act single-handed and on his own initiative. In his
own mind he had already decided that he would wait until Madame la
Comtesse came out of the concierge's lodge, and that he would follow her
and apprehend her somewhere out in the open streets, rather than here
where her friend Bertin might prove to be a stalwart as well as a
desperate man, ready with a pistol, whilst he--Tournefort--was unarmed.
Bertin, who had, it seemed, been entrusted with the task of finding the
diamonds, could then be shadowed and arrested in the very act of
filching property which by decree of the State belonged to the people.
So he waited patiently for a while. No doubt the aristo would remain
here under shelter until the storm had abated. Soon the sound of voices
died down, and an extraordinary silence descended on this miserable,
abandoned corner of old Paris. The silence became all the more marked
after a while, because the rain ceased its monotonous pattering and the
soughing of the wind was stilled. It was, in fact, this amazing
stillness which set citizen Tournefort thinking. Evidently the aristo
did not intend to come out of the lodge to-night. Well! Tournefort had
not meant to make himself unpleasant inside the house, or to have a
quarrel just yet with the traitor Bertin, whoever he was; but his hand
was forced and he had no option.
The door of the lodge was locked. He tugged vigorously at the bell again
and again, for at first he got no answer. A few minutes later he heard
the sound of shuffling footsteps upon creaking boards. The door was
opened, and a man in night attire, with bare, thin legs and tattered
carpet slippers on his feet, confronted an exceedingly astonished
servant of the Committee of Public Safety. Indeed, Tournefort thought
that he must have been dreaming, or that he was dreaming now. For the
man who opened the door to him was well known to every agent of the
Committee. He was an ex-soldier who had been crippled years ago by the
loss of one arm, and had held the post of concierge in a house in the
Ruelle du Paradis ever since. His name was Grosjean. He was very old,
and nearly doubled up with rheumatism, had scarcely any hair on his head
or flesh on his bones. At this moment he appeared to be suffering from a
cold in the head, for his eyes were streaming and his narrow, hooked
nose was adorned by a drop of moisture at its tip. In fact, poor old
Grosjean looked more like a dilapidated scarecrow than a dangerous
conspirator. Tournefort literally gasped at sight of him, and Grosjean
uttered a kind of croak, intended, no doubt, for complete surprise.
"Citizen Tournefort!" he exclaimed. "Name of a dog! What are you doing
here at this hour and in this abominable weather? Come in! Come in!" he
added, and, turning on his heel, he shuffled back into the inner room,
and then returned carrying a lighted lamp, which he set upon the table.
"Amelie left a sup of hot coffee on the hob in the kitchen before she
went to bed. You must have a drop of that."
He was about to shuffle off again when Tournefort broke in roughly:
"None of that nonsense, Grosjean! Where are the aristos?"
"The aristos, citizen?" queried Grosjean, and nothing could have looked
more utterly, more ludicrously bewildered than did the old concierge at
this moment. "What aristos?"
"Bertin and Madame la Comtesse," retorted Tournefort gruffly. "I heard
them talking."
"You have been dreaming, citizen Tournefort," the old man said, with a
husky little laugh. "Sit down, and let me get you some coffee--"
"Don't try and hoodwink me, Grosjean!" Tournefort cried now in a sudden
access of rage. "I tell you that I saw the light. I heard the aristos
talking. There was a man named Bertin, and a woman he called 'Madame la
Comtesse,' and I say that some devilish royalist plot is being hatched
here, and that you, Grosjean, will suffer for it if you try and shield
those aristos."
"But, citizen Tournefort," replied the concierge meekly, "I assure you
that I have seen no aristos. The door of my bedroom was open, and the
lamp was by my bedside. Amelie, too, has only been in bed a few minutes.
You ask her! There has been no one, I tell you--no one! I should have
seen and heard them--the door was open," he reiterated pathetically.
"We'll soon see about that!" was Tournefort's curt comment.
But it was his turn indeed to be utterly bewildered. He searched--none
too gently--the squalid little lodge through and through, turned the
paltry sticks of furniture over, hauled little Amelie, Grosjean's
granddaughter, out of bed, searched under the mattresses, and even poked
his head up the chimney.
Grosjean watched him wholly unperturbed. These were strange times, and
friend Tournefort had obviously gone a little off his head. The worthy
old concierge calmly went on getting the coffee ready. Only when
presently Tournefort, worn out with anger and futile exertion, threw
himself, with many an oath, into the one armchair, Grosjean remarked
coolly:
"I tell you what I think it is, citizen. If you were standing just by
the door of the lodge you had the back staircase of the house
immediately behind you. The partition wall is very thin, and there is a
disused door just there also. No doubt the voices came from there. You
see, if there had been any aristos here," he added naively, "they could
not have flown up the chimney, could they?"
That argument was certainly unanswerable. But Tournefort was out of
temper. He roughly ordered Grosjean to bring the lamp and show him the
back staircase and the disused door. The concierge obeyed without a
murmur. He was not in the least disturbed or frightened by all this
blustering. He was only afraid that getting out of bed had made his cold
worse. But he knew Tournefort of old. A good fellow, but inclined to be
noisy and arrogant since he was in the employ of the Government.
Grosjean took the precaution of putting on his trousers and wrapping an
old shawl round his shoulders. Then he had a final sip of hot coffee;
after which he picked up the lamp and guided Tournefort out of the
lodge.
The wind had quite gone down by now. The lamp scarcely flickered as
Grosjean held it above his head.
"Just here, citizen Tournefort," he said, and turned sharply to his
left. But the next sound which he uttered was a loud croak of
astonishment.
"That door has been out of use ever since I've been here," he muttered.
"And it certainly was closed when I stood up against it," rejoined
Tournefort, with a savage oath, "or, of course, I should have noticed
it."
Close to the lodge, at right angles to it, a door stood partially open.
Tournefort went through it, closely followed by Grosjean. He found
himself in a passage which ended in a cul de sac on his right; on the
left was the foot of the stairs. The whole place was pitch dark save for
the feeble light of the lamp. The cul de sac itself reeked of dirt and
fustiness, as if it had not been cleaned or ventilated for years.
"When did you last notice that this door was closed?" queried
Tournefort, furious with the sense of discomfiture, which he would have
liked to vent on the unfortunate concierge.
"I have not noticed it for some days, citizen," replied Grosjean meekly.
"I have had a severe cold, and have not been outside my lodge since
Monday last. But we'll ask Amelie!" he added more hopefully.
Amelie, however, could throw no light upon the subject. She certainly
kept the back stairs cleaned and swept, but it was not part of her
duties to extend her sweeping operations as far as the cul de sac. She
had quite enough to do as it was, with grandfather now practically
helpless. This morning, when she went out to do her shopping, she had
not noticed whether the disused door did or did not look the same as
usual.
Grosjean was very sorry for his friend Tournefort, who appeared vastly
upset, but still more sorry for himself, for he knew what endless
trouble this would entail upon him.
Nor was the trouble slow in coming, not only on Grosjean, but on every
lodger inside the house; for before half an hour had gone by Tournefort
had gone and come back, this time with the local commissary of police
and a couple of agents, who had every man, woman and child in that house
out of bed and examined at great length, their identity books
searchingly overhauled, their rooms turned topsy-turvy and their
furniture knocked about.
It was past midnight before all these perquisitions were completed. No
one dared to complain at these indignities put upon peaceable citizens
on the mere denunciation of an obscure police agent. These were times
when every regulation, every command, had to be accepted without a
murmur. At one o'clock in the morning, Grosjean himself was thankful to
get back to bed, having satisfied the commissary that he was not a
dangerous conspirator.
But of anyone even remotely approaching the description of the ci-devant
Comtesse de Sucy, or of any man called Bertin, there was not the
faintest trace.