Читать книгу The Man in Grey - Baroness Orczy - Страница 6

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M. le Procureur Impérial, sitting in his comfortable armchair in the well-furnished apartment which he occupied in the Rue St. Blaise at Alençon, was surveying his visitor with a quizzical and questioning gaze.

On the desk before him lay the letter which that same visitor had presented to him the previous evening—a letter penned by no less a hand than that of M. le Duc d’Otrante himself, Minister of Police, and recommending the bearer of this august autograph to the good will of M. de Saint-Tropèze, Procureur Impérial at the tribunal of Alençon. Nay, more! M. le Ministre in that same autograph letter gave orders, in no grudging terms, that the bearer was to be trusted implicitly, and that every facility was to be given him in the execution of his duty: said duty consisting in the tracking down and helping to bring to justice of as many as possible of those saucy Chouans who, not content with terrorising the countryside, were up in arms against the government of His Imperial Majesty.

A direct encroachment this on the rights and duties of M. le Procureur Impérial; no wonder he surveyed the quiet, insignificant-looking individual before him, with a not altogether benevolent air.

M. le préfet sitting on the opposite side of the high mantelpiece was discreetly silent until his chief chose to speak.

After a brief while the Procureur Impérial addressed his visitor.

“Monsieur le Duc d’Otrante,” he said in that dry, supercilious tone which he was wont to affect when addressing his subordinates, “speaks very highly of you, Monsieur—Monsieur—By the way, the Minister, I perceive, does not mention your name. What is your name, Monsieur?”

“Fernand, Monsieur le Procureur,” replied the man.

“Fernand? Fernand what?”

“Nothing, Monsieur le Procureur. Only Fernand.”

The little Man in Grey spoke very quietly in a dull, colourless tone which harmonised with the neutral tone of his whole appearance. For a moment it seemed as if a peremptory or sarcastic retort hovered on M. le Procureurs lips. The man’s quietude appeared like an impertinence. M. de Saint-Tropèze belonged to the old Noblesse. He had emigrated at the time of the Revolution and spent a certain number of years in England, during which time a faithful and obscure steward administered his property and saved it from confiscation.

The blandishments of the newly-crowned Emperor had lured M. de Saint-Tropèze back to France. Common sense and ambition had seemingly got the better of his antiquated ideals, whilst Napoleon was only too ready to surround himself with as many scions of the ancient nobility as were willing to swear allegiance to him. He welcomed Henri de Saint-Tropèze and showered dignities upon him with a lavish hand; but the latter never forgot that the Government he now served was an upstart one, and he never departed from that air of condescension and high breeding which kept him aloof from his more plebeian subordinates and which gave him an authority and an influence in the province which they themselves could never hope to attain.

M. le préfet had coughed discreetly. The warning was well-timed. He knew every word of the Minister’s letter by heart, and one phrase in it might, he feared, have escaped M. le Procureur’s notice. It ordered that the bearer of the Ministerial credentials was to be taken entirely on trust—no questions were to be asked of him save those to which he desired to make reply. To disregard even the vaguest hint given by the all-powerful Minister of Police was, to say the least, hazardous. Fortunately M. de Saint-Tropèze understood the warning. He pressed his thin lips tightly together and did not pursue the subject of his visitor’s name any farther.

“You propose setting to work immediately, Monsieur—er—Fernand?” he asked with frigid hauteur.

“With your permission, Monsieur le Procureur,” replied the Man in Grey.

“In the matter of the highway robbery the other night, for instance?”

“In that and other matters, Monsieur le Procureur.”

“You were on the coach which was attacked by those damnable Chouans, I believe?”

“Yes, Monsieur le Procureur. I picked up the coach at Argentan and sat next to the driver until the vehicle was ordered to halt.”

“Then what happened?”

“A man scrambled up on the box-seat beside me, and holding a pistol to my head commanded me to descend.”

“And you descended?”

“Yes,” replied the man quietly. He paused a moment and then added by way of an explanation: “I hurt my knee coming down; the pain caused me to lose some measure of consciousness. When I returned to my senses, I found myself on the roadside—all alone—there was no sign either of the coach or of the footpads.”

“An unfortunate beginning,” said M. de Saint-Tropèze with a distinct note of sarcasm in his voice, “for a secret agent of His Majesty’s Police sent down to track some of the most astute rascals known in the history of crime.”

“I hope to do better in the future, Monsieur le Procureur,” rejoined the Man in Grey simply.

M. de Saint-Tropèze made no further remark, and for a moment or two there was silence in the room. The massive Louis XIV clock ticked monotonously; M. de Saint-Tropèze seemed to be dissociating his well-bred person from the sordid and tortuous affairs of the Police. The Man in Grey appeared to be waiting until he was spoken to again, and M. le préfet had a vague feeling that the silence was becoming oppressive, as if some unspoken enmity lurked between the plebeian and obscure police agent and the highly connected and influential Procurator of His Majesty the Emperor. He threw himself blandly into the breach.

“Of course, of course,” he said genially. “You, Monsieur—er—Fernand, are lucky to have escaped with your life. Those rascals stick at nothing nowadays. The driver of the coach fully believed that you had been murdered. I suppose you saw nothing of the rogue?”

But this was evidently not one of the questions which the Man in Grey had any desire to answer, and M. Vimars did not insist. He turned obsequiously to M. le Procureur.

“The driver,” he said, “spoke of one having a wooden leg. But the worthy Gontran was very vague in all his statements. I imagine that he and all the male passengers must have behaved like cowards or the rascals would never have got so clean away.”

“The night was very dark, Monsieur le Préfet,” observed the Man in Grey dryly, “and the Chouans were well armed.”

“Quite so,” here broke in M. le Procureur impatiently, “and no object can be served now in recriminations. See to it, my good Vimars,” he continued in a tone that was still slightly sarcastic but entirely peremptory, “that the Minister’s orders are obeyed to the last letter. Place yourself and all your personnel and the whole of the local police at Monsieur—er—Fernand’s disposal, and do not let me hear any more complaints of inefficiency or want of good will on your part until those scoundrels have been laid by the heel.”