Scaramouche (16 page)

"This is a strange hour for such a visit," he growled, mistrustfully, as he handed back the paper.

The civilian's answer was prompt. "It should have been paid some hours ago. But I have other patients as important as this Capet brat. My report must be made by morning."

"It is odd! Cursedly odd!" Muttering, Simon took the lantern from the hands of the sentry and held it up so that the light dissipated the shadows under that round black hat. He recoiled at sight of the man of medicine's face.

"De Batz!" he ejaculated. Then with an unclean oath, almost in a breath he added: "Arrest that man!"

Even as he spoke he sprang forward, himself to seize the pseudo-doctor. He was met by a kick in the stomach that sent him sprawling. The lantern was shivered on the cobbles, and before the winded Simon could pick himself up the Baron had vanished. The men of the patrol who helped him to rise detained him with a solicitude for his injuries, for which he cursed them furiously whilst struggling to deliver himself from their arms. At last he broke away. "After him!" he screamed. "Follow me!" And he dashed through the gateway, his own myrmidons at his heels.

The false lieutenant, a big fellow named Boissancourt, judged that he had ensured for de Batz a sufficient start to enable him to reach the neighbouring shelter of No. 12 in the Rue Charlot. As the alarm now brought the whole guard of municipals streaming into the courtyard, Boissancourt coolly marched out his patrol, and left the porter to explain. To have followed Simon would have led to meeting him on his return. Explanations must have ensued, with incalculable consequences to themselves and also perhaps to Cortey. Boissancourt judged it best in all the circumstances to march his patrol away in the opposite direction and then disperse it. For to-night the blow had failed.

So far as de Batz was concerned, Boisancourt's assumptions were exact. The Baron made for the Rue Chariot. He obeyed instinct rather than reasoned thought. He was as yet too confused to think. All that he realized was that either by accident or betrayal the carefully-prepared plot was ruined, and he himself in the tightest corner he had yet known, not even excepting his adventure on the morning of the King's execution. If he were caught to-night, whilst still, as it were, red-handed, it would certainly be the end of him. Not all the influence he could command would suffice to save him from the tale of his attempt to gain access to the royal prisoners.

He must trust, therefore, to speed; and so he ran as he had never run before; and already the feet of his pursuers came clattering after him.

To the six who waited at the corner of the Rue Chariot this patter of running feet was the first intimation at once that the moment for action had arrived and that this action was other than that for which they were prepared. Their uneasiness swiftly mounted to alarm at the sounds which followed: a shout, an explosion of vociferation, and the rapidly approaching clatter that told of flight and pursuit. No sooner had Louis realized it than the pursued was amongst them revealing himself for de Batz in a half-dozen imprecatory words which announced the failure and bade them save themselves.

He scarcely paused to utter them before plunging on down the Rue Chariot.

Instinctively the others would have followed him in his flight, had not André-Louis arrested them.

"Turn about, and hold them," he commanded crisply. "We must cover his retreat."

It needed no more to remind them that this was, indeed, their duty. At whatever cost to themselves the Baron's valuable life must be preserved.

A moment later the pursuers were upon them, a half-dozen lads led by the bow-legged Simon. It was a relief to discover that they had to deal with civilians, for André-Louis had entertained an unpleasant fear that bayonets were about to make short work of them.

Simon hailed them with confidence and authority. "To us, citizens! After that fellow who passed you. He's a traitor scoundrel."

He and his followers pressed forward looking for nothing here but compliance and reinforcement. To their surprise they found themselves flung back by the six who held the street. The Citizen Simon raged furiously.

"In the name of the law! Out of the way! We are agents of the Committee of Public Safety."

André-Louis derided them. "Agents of the Committee of Public Safety! Any gang of footpads can call itself that." He stood forward, his manner peremptory, addressing Simon. "Your card, citizen? It happens that I am an agent of the committee, myself."

As a ruse to gain time, nothing could have been better. Some precious moments were wasted in sheer surprise. Then Simon grew frenzied by the need for haste if the fugitive Baron was not to escape him.

"I summon you to help me overtake that runagate scoundrel. We'll make each other's better acquaintance afterwards. Come on!"

Again he attempted to advance, and again he was flung rudely back.

"Not so fast. I'll make your acquaintance now, if you please. Where is this card of yours, citizen? Out with it, or we'll march you to the post of the Section."

Simon swore foully, and suspicions awoke in him. "By God! I believe you all belong to this same gang of damned traitors. Where's your own card?"

André-Louis' hand went to the pocket of his riding-coat.

"It's here." He fumbled for a moment, adding this to the wasted time. When at last he brought forth his hand again, it grasped a pistol by the barrel The butt of it crashed upon the Citizen Simon's brow, and sent him reeling back to tumble in a heap.

"Sweep them out of the way," cried André-Louis, plunging forward.

In an instant battle was joined and eleven men were a writhing, thrusting, stabbing human clot. Hoarse voices blended discordantly; a pistol shot went off. The street was awakening. Windows were being thrown up and even doors were opening.

André-Louis, desperately beating off an attack that seemed concentrated upon himself, suddenly caught the glow of lanterns and the livid gleam of bayonets rounding the corner of the Rue de Bretagne. A patrol was advancing at the double. At first he thought it might be Cortey and his men, or Boissancourt, either of which would perhaps have meant salvation. But realizing at once from the direction of their approach that there was no ground for the hope, he gave the word to scatter.

"Away! Away! Every man for himself!"

He turned to set the example of flight, when one of Simon's men leapt upon him, and bore him down. He twisted even as he fell, drew his second pistol with his left hand, and fired. It missed his assailant, but brought down another of the patriots with a bullet in his leg. Only two of them remained entirely whole, and these two were both now upon André-Louis. They were joined by Simon, who, having recovered from the blow that had felled him, came staggering towards them. Of the other three, one sat against a wall nursing a broken head from which the blood was streaming, a second lay face downward in the middle of the street, whilst the third, crippled by the bullet in his leg, was howling dismally.

Of the royalists, the Chevalier de Larnache was dead, with a knife in his heart, and André-Louis lay inert, stretched out by a blow over the head from one of his captors. The other four royalists had vanished when the patrol reached the field of battle.

Their escape was assisted by the fact that, entirely misunderstanding the situation, the sergeant of the patrol ordered his men to surround these disturbers of the peace, and the Citizen Simon standing now before him, was still too dazed by the effects of the blow to think of more than one thing at a time. At the moment he was being required by the sergeant to give an account of himself He produced his civic card. The sergeant scanned it.

"What were you doing here, Citizen Simon?"

"What was I doing here? Ah, that! Sacred name of a pig, what was I doing?" He almost choked in his fury. "I was defeating a royalist plot to save the Widow Capet and her cub. But for me her aristocratic friends would have got her away by now. And you ask me what I am doing! As it is, the damned scoundrels have got off; all but this one, who's dead, and this one we hold."

The sergeant was incredulous. "Oh, but a plot to save the heretofore Queen! How could that have succeeded?"

"How?" Fiercer grew the Citizen Simon before this incredulity. "Take me to the headquarters of the section. I'll explain myself there, by God! And let your men bring along this cursed aristocrat. On your lives, don't let him get away. I mean to make sure of this one. It'll be one of the cursed fribbles for the guillotine, anyway."

CHAPTER XVII

AT CHARONNE

In the outskirts of the hamlet of Charonne, between four and five miles from Paris, on the very edge of the Park of Bagnolet, the Baron de Batz possessed a pleasant little property, which had once, in the days of the Regency, been a hunting pavilion. It was tenanted in 1793 by the talented Babette de Grandmaison, who until lately had been a singer at the Italian Theatre. The property was nominally owned by her brother Burette, who was the postmaster of Beauvais. Burette was no more than a mask for the Baron de Batz. Foreseeing that the property of the nobles, whether they emigrated or remained in France, was doomed to confiscation, and acting with that foresight which usually enabled him to carry out his undertakings with safety if not always with success, the Baron had made a simulated sale of this property to Burette, who was not likely to be molested in his possessions.

In this country retreat on the day after the miscarried attempt to save the Queen, the survivors of the rough-and-tumble in the Rue Chariot were assembled win de Batz.

The Baron had succeeded last night in finding shelter at No. 12, where, some hours later, when the alarm had died down, the others had come one by one to join him. They had remained there until morning. Then, because he had deemed it prudent to disappear from Paris for some days, he had made his way to Charonne, quitting Paris by the Enfer Barrier rather than by that of the Bastille which led directly to the Charonne road. Thither he had bidden his companions to follow him severally, and thither they had safely come.

Langéac had arrived late in the afternoon, some hours after the others, for Langéac accounted it his duty to inform the Chevalier de Pomelles, who was d'Entragues' chief agent in Paris—the head of the royalist committee which d'Entragues had established there—of last night's events.

Langéac found de Batz at table with Devaux, Boissancourt, La Guiche and Roussel. Babette de Grandmaison was also present, a dark, handsome young woman who belonged body and soul to the Baron and who shared now the dejection which, whilst general, sat most heavily upon de Batz. As much as by the exasperating failure of his cherished plot and by the apparently fortuitous wrecking of plans so carefully prepared was de Batz now troubled by the fate of André-Louis, whom he had come to love and to whose gallant stand he owed his own escape.

Langéac's arrival aroused the hope of news. De Batz started up eagerly as the young man entered. Langéac met his anxious questions with a shrug.

"I have no definite news. But there is no ground for any hope."

De Batz displayed a fierce impatience. He was white, his eyes blood-injected.

"Is he alive, at least?"

Langéac was entirely pessimistic, and rather languid. "Does it matter? For his own sake I hope that he is not. It will be the guillotine for him if he has survived. That is inevitable."

De Batz was beyond being civil. "Devil take your assumptions! I do not ask for them. I ask for facts. If you have been unable to glean any, say so, and I'll employ someone else to obtain them, or else go myself."

Langéac's lips tightened sulkily. "I have already told you that I bring no news."

"I should have known you wouldn't. You're so damned careful of your skin, Langéac. Will you tell me what you've been doing all these hours in Paris?"

Langéac faced him across the table. "I've not been taking care of my skin, sir! And I resent your words. You have no right to use them to me."

"I care nothing about your resentments." The Baron rapped his knuckles on the table. "I ask you what you have been doing in Paris. All that it imported me to know is whether Moreau is alive."

The gigantic and rather phlegmatic Boissancourt, beside whose chair Langéac was standing, leaned across to set a hand on the Baron's arm. "Patience, de Batz, my friend," he boomed in his great voice. "You have already been answered. After all, Langéac can't work miracles."

The hawk-faced, impetuous young Marquis de La Guiche agreed with bitterly ironical vehemence. "That's the truth, by God!"

Devaux sought to keep the peace. "The fact is, Langéac, we are all a little fretted."

De Batz shrugged impatiently, and set himself to pace the room in line with the three long windows that stood open to the lawn. Babette's handsome eyes followed him, pain and anxiety in their dark depths. Then she looked up at the resentful newcomer with a sad little smile.

"You are standing, Monsieur de Langéac. Sit down and give yourself something to eat. You will he tired and hungry."

"Tired, yes. God knows I'm tired. But too sick at heart for hunger. I thank you, mademoiselle." He flung himself into a chair, stretching his dusty legs under the table. He too was pale, his red-brown hair dishevelled. "Give me some wine, Devaux."

Devaux passed him the bottle, whilst de Batz continued to pace, like a caged animal. At last he halted.

"I must know," he announced. "I can't bear any more of this uncertainty."

"Unfortunately," said Devaux, "Langéac is right. There is no uncertainty. Oh, spare me your scowls, de Batz. God knows I am as sick at heart as you are. But facts must be faced, and we must count our losses without self-deception. Larnache was killed, and if Moreau wasn't, he soon will be. He is irrevocably lost."

De Batz swore viciously. "If he's not dead," he added, "I'll get him out of their hands somehow."

"If you try," said Devaux, "you will merely thrust your own head through the window of the guillotine, and you owe it to us all and to the cause not to do that. Come to your senses, man. This is not a matter in which you can interfere. Not all the influence you can command—not if you had twenty times the influence you have—could you do anything. If you attempt it you'll doom yourself by betraying your share in last night's events, which rests at present on the word of only one man who could easily be shown to have been mistaken in the dark. Resign yourself, my friend. There are no battles without casualties."

De Batz sat down and took his head in his hands. There was a lugubrious silence. Devaux, himself a member of a government department, spoke with authority. Moreover, he wag known for a man of calm, clear judgment. Boissancourt and Roussel confirmed his words. The Marquis de la Guiche, however, was more of the temper of de Batz.

"If we knew at least how this thing happened!" he exclaimed. "Was it just blundering Fate that intervened, or was there betrayal?" He turned to Langéac. "You did not think of seeking news of Michonis at his house?"

"You may call me a coward for that," the young man answered. "But, frankly, I dared not. If there was betrayal, the house of Michonis would be a trap for any of us."

The Baron's face remained sternly inscrutable.

"You have not yet told us what actually you did in Paris."

"I went to the Rue de Ménars, and I saw Tissot. There had been no domiciliary visit there, which at least is hopeful, for in the event of betrayal that is where investigations must have begun."

The Baron nodded. "Yes. Well? After that?"

"After that I sought Pomelles."

La Guiche flung him a fresh sneer.

"Oh, of course you must report our failure to d'Entragues' committee."

"You will remember, Monsieur le Marquis, that, after all, I am d'Entragues' man."

"I should like you better if I could forget it, Langéac," said de Batz. "What had Pomelles to say?"

"I am required to start for Hamm at once, to report the event." At this the Baron's barely-suppressed fury burst forth again. Ah, that, for instance! To be sure he'll be in haste to have my failure reported, and your friend d'Entragues will nib his hands over it. When do you start?"

"To-night, if you offer no objection."

"I? Offer objection? To your departure? My good Langéac, I have never yet discovered a use for you. I thought I had last night. But you have shown me how ridiculous was the assumption. Oh, you may go to Hamm or to Hell when you please."

Langéac got up. "De Batz, you are intolerable!"

"Report it with the rest."

Langéac was shaking with indignation. "You make me glad that our association is at an end."

"Then we are both pleased, Langéac. A safe journey to you."