Читать книгу A Joyous Adventure - Baroness Orczy - Страница 7

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The “Fisherman’s Rest” still stood at the beginning of the nineteenth century as it had done in the days when the gallant Scarlet Pimpernel and his band of heroes made it the starting-place for their adventurous expeditions to Revolutionary France. It was still the popular resort of high-class travellers on their way to the continent of Europe, as well as that of fisherfolk, soldiers, sailors and smugglers, and it was generally averred that more plots of every sort and kind were hatched at the “Fisherman’s Rest” at Dover than in any political club in London.

Be that as it may, it is certain that the six men who were gathered in the coffee-room of the popular tavern on this late afternoon of March, 1802, had no wish either to be seen or overheard by the rest of Master Jellyband’s customers. They had chosen one of the deep embrasures formed by the high seats around a trestle-table, and when they spoke they did so in whispers, even though the language which they used was the Normandy patois, which is hardly ever understood even by Frenchmen, save those who have spent years in the province. Of the six men there was one who sat apart from the others. He was short and rather stout, with the hooked nose and high, somewhat receding forehead of the Bourbons.

Though he was quite young—five and twenty at most—the others listened or spoke to him with the greatest deference: they addressed him as “Monseigneur.”

The shades of evening were beginning to draw in, and a stiff up-Channel gale was blowing.

“The wind is favourable,” one of the men remarked, a rough-looking fellow with shaggy black hair and beard. “The next three hours will see Monseigneur’s foot once more on French soil.”

Monseigneur gave a quick, impatient sigh. “I would I were sure of the wisdom of this step,” he murmured partly to himself.

“I wish,” the black-bearded man retorted, “I were as sure of salvation as I am of that.”

Monseigneur made no reply; he gazed thoughtfully through the window which framed in a picture of the harbour, and the small pier, and with fishing and other craft gracefully balanced in the wind.

“Well!” Monseigneur said after a moment or two, “I suppose it is time we went.”

He rose and strode out of the coffee-room, the others following. A few heads were turned to watch the foreigners go. Master Jellyband, vaguely suspecting his customer’s exalted rank, hurried across the room to open the door for him, and help him on with his coat. But this the bearded man would not allow. He snatched the coat from the landlord’s hands and helped Monseigneur on with it, and finally presented him with his hat and cane.

For a long time after that did Master Jellyband stand under the portico of the “Fisherman’s Rest” watching the group of “Frenchies” as they strode down the road along the waterside up to a small landing-stage to which a short flight of stone steps gave access. Here a boat was waiting in readiness. Monseigneur stepped into it, and three of his companions went with him. The black-bearded man and one other remained on the waterside, watching the tiny boat being rowed across to where a hoy lay at anchor. In the fast-fading light it was just possible to distinguish the boat as she came, alongside the hoy, and to see Monseigneur and his three companions climb up her side.

Master Jellyband scratched his head thoughtfully before he finally turned back into the coffee-room of the tavern. There was something in the appearance of the man whom the others styled “Monseigneur” which revived certain vague memories in the worthy landlord’s mind. But soon he thought no more about it. French gentlemen of exalted rank were not rare visitors at his popular inn these days.

Half an hour or so later the black-bearded man and his companion returned to the “Fisherman’s Rest.” They had stood on the waterside, in the gathering darkness, for as long as the tiniest speck of light indicated the progress of the hoy. When the evening mist finally wrapped her in its impenetrable veils, the two men turned away.

“A triumph for you, Cottereau,” one of the men remarked, as together they strode along the waterside.

“It should not have needed quite so much persuasion,” the other said with a sneer.

“I don’t know. It is a big risk, mixing him up with our fellows. There is so much that these royal people never understand—”

The man paused a moment, then added thoughtfully: “I wonder what Mme. la Marquise will have to say about it?”

Cottereau shrugged his broad shoulders, and muttered an oath or two in his beard; but he made no further remark until he and his companion were once more in sight of the “Fisherman’s Rest.” Then he said curtly:

“There’ll be no one in the coffee-room now. And I want to read you the draft of one or two of my plans. I flatter myself that they are well thought out.”

The two men then turned into the inn; even as they did so, a figure which in the darkness appeared almost like a part of the building detached itself from the tavern wall and retreated, crouching, still farther back into the gloom.

It was half-past eight o’clock when Cottereau and his companion finally came out of the “Fisherman’s Rest.”

The evening now was very dark. There was no moon visible. Heavy storm-laden clouds swept across the sky, driven by an eighty-miles-an-hour gale, and save for the small oil-lamp under the portico the approach to the inn was in complete darkness.

The men were forced to bend their heads to the wind, and they had some difficulty at first in breasting the gale. At the corner of the street they parted, and Cottereau walked alone up the sharp incline of the ill-paved street which would take him to his humble lodgings high up in the town.

This street, too, was very dark. The oil-lamps fixed to brackets in the walls of the houses at rare intervals only threw a small circle of light immediately below them, and left great portions of the rough pavement in complete gloom. Cottereau strode along in the middle of the road. Conscious of his own powerful physique he had no thought of his personal safety, but he was carrying papers—those precious plans of his of which he was so proud—the importance of which it were impossible to over-estimate.

He had stowed them in the inside pocket of his rough jacket, and as he stepped out up the hill he held his hand tightly over those precious documents.

Suddenly and without any warning two figures sprang on him from out a dark side alley; a thick cloth was thrown over his head, blinding him and smothering his cries and his oaths, while his legs were seized by powerful arms, causing him to lose his balance.

He fell, tried to struggle and to kick; he beat about with his fists, until his arms, too, were pinioned and tied with a rope behind his back. Three or four more ruffians had apparently come to the assistance of his first assailants; soon he was rendered quite helpless, through a rope being wound round his legs. Thus gagged and trussed he was lifted off his feet and carried down the hill. Whither he knew not. For some distance, at any rate. Instinct soon told him that it was somewhere along the water-side. He could scarcely breathe underneath that heavy cloth, which at the last moment had been tightened round his mouth; all he could do was to grind his teeth in impotent rage.

Who his assailants were he could not guess. He would have suspected common highway robbery, except for the fact that “gentlemen of the road” would not give themselves the trouble to attack anyone as roughly clad and as obviously unendowed with wealth as he was.

It must, then, be a question of his papers—spies of those whose interest it was to keep him out of the way, or to discredit him before the royalist faction. Those plans of his which he had been fool enough to jot down on paper would certainly do that—plans of robbery and pillage, not to mention murder. And Cottereau ground his teeth again and again; it was only in thoughts that he could curse, and curse he did those who had succeeded in getting the better of him. Chief among these he reckoned no less a person than the uncrowned King of France.

He must have lost consciousness after a time, for he never remembered afterwards at what moment his captors finally set him down, or what happened for some time afterwards. When he came to, it was with the pleasant feeling of being able to breathe again; the cloth had been removed from his face, and at the moment he was actually staring into the light of a constable’s lanthorn, held just above his face. One or two quidnuncs had stood by, and were already busy helping to undo the cords that pinioned his arms and legs. Cottereau’s first conscious act, as soon as he had struggled to his knees, was to feel for his papers. He swore between his teeth when he realised that he had been effectually robbed, not only of his precious plans, but of the little money he had left to enable him to follow Monseigneur to France.

And there were these fools around him arguing whether he should be taken before the magistrate, or what should be done with him. Delay! delay! while Monseigneur would be waiting for him, and heaven only knew what would be happening over there. Cottereau was not a man of patience, which the worthy Dover constable discovered within the next few minutes, for, even while the quidnuncs were expatiating on the ineptitude of the local constabulary in coping with footpads and other light-fingered gentry, and he in a heated argument did his best to uphold the dignity of his office, the man about whom the whole pother was about slipped incontinently away. While the dispute was at its hottest Jacques Cottereau started to run, and by the time the disputants had realised that he was no longer there he had already disappeared up a side turning, and no one could tell in which direction he had gone.