Читать книгу Sir Percy Leads the Band - Emmuska Orczy - Страница 11

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There was quite a crowd in the café. A number of idlers and quidnuncs had drifted out by now from Paris, bringing with them news of the great event and of the minor happenings that clustered round it. Lepelletier, the rich and noted deputy who had voted for "Death with no delay," had been assassinated by an unknown and fanatical royalist while he sat at dinner in a fashionable restaurant. His funeral would be on the morrow. Philippe d'Orléans, now known as Philippe Égalité, Louis Capet's own cousin, had driven in a smart cabriolet to the Place de la Révolution, and watched his kinsman's head fall under the guillotine. "A good patriot, what?" was the universal comment on his attitude. The priest who had been with Capet to the last had mysteriously disappeared at the very moment when, in the Hall of Justice, a decree had been promulgated ordering his arrest. He was, it seems, a dangerous conspirator whom traitors in the pay of Austria had sent to the Temple prison as a substitute for the priest chosen by the Convention to attend on Louis Capet. This news was received with execration. But the priest could not have gone far. The police would soon get him, and he would then pay his second visit to Madame la Guillotine with no chance of paying her a third.

That was the general trend of conversation in the Café Tison: the telling of news and the comments thereon. Louis Maurin and Blakeney had secured a table in a quiet corner of the room; they ordered coffee and fine, and the lawyer told the waiter to bring him pen, ink and paper. These were set before him. He said a polite "Will you excuse me?" to his vis-à-vis before settling down to write. When he had finished what appeared to be a longish letter, he slipped it into an envelope, closed and addressed it, and then summoned the waiter back. He handed him the letter, together with some small money, and said peremptorily:

"There is a commissionaire outside. Give him this and tell him to take it at once to the Town Hall."

The waiter said: "Yes, Citizen!" and went out with the letter, after which short incident the two men sat on silently opposite one another for a time, sipping their coffee and fine, watching the bustling crowd around them, and listening to the chatter, the comments and expressions of approval and disapproval more or less ear-splitting, as the news the quidnuncs brought were welcome or the reverse.

And suddenly Maurin came out with an abrupt question:

"Who was that with old Levet just now, Monsieur le Professeur?" he asked. "Do you happen to know? He was dressed like a priest. I am sure I saw a cassock."

He blurted this out in a loud, rasping voice, almost as if he felt irritated by Monsieur le Professeur's composure and desired to upset it. He did not know, astute lawyer through he was, that he was sitting opposite a man whom no power on earth could ever ruffle or disturb. The man to him was just a black-coated worker like himself, professor at some university or other, a Frenchman, of course, judging from his precise and highly cultured speech.

"I saw no one," Blakeney replied simply. "Perhaps it was a priest called in to attend Madame Levet. You heard Mademoiselle Blanche say that her mother was dying."

"Dead, I understood," Maurin commented dryly. "But Levet, anyhow, had no need to send for a priest. His own son is a calotin."

"Indeed? Then it must have been the doctor."

"The doctor? No, Blanche and I went to fetch Docteur Pradel, but he was not in."

Maurin remained silent for a minute or two and then said decisively:

"I am sure—or nearly sure that it was not Pradel. Of course the fog was very dense and I may have been mistaken. But I don't think I was. At any rate..."

He paused, and thoughtfully sipped his coffee over the rim of his cup; he seemed to be watching his vis-à-vis very intently.

Suddenly he said:

"I shall be going to the Town Hall presently. Will you accompany me, Monsieur le Professeur?"

"To the Town Hall?" I regret, but I..."

"It won't take up much of your time," the young lawyer insisted, "and your presence would be very helpful to me."

"How so?"

"As a witness."

"Would you mind explaining? I don't quite understand."

Maurin called for another fine, drank it down at a gulp and went on:

"Should I be boring you, Monsieur le Professeur, if I were to tell you something of my own sentimental history. You are, I know, an intimate friend of the Levets, and my story is closely connected with theirs. Shall I be boring you?" he reiterated.

"Not in the least," Blakeney answered courteously.

The younger man leaned across the table and lowering his voice to a whisper he began:

"I love Blanche Levet. My great desire is to make her my wife. Unfortunately her father hates me like poison. Though I am a moderate, if convinced Republican, he classes me with all those he calls assassins and regicides." He paused a moment, then once more insisted: "You are quite sure that this does not bore you, Monsieur le Professeur?"

"Quite sure," Blakeney replied.

"You are very kind. I was hoping to enlist your sympathy, perhaps your co-operation, because Blanche has often told me that old Levet has a great regard for you."

"And I for him."

"Quite so. Now, my dear Professeur," the lawyer went on confidentially, "when I saw just now old Levet introducing a man surreptitiously into his house, a scheme suggested itself to me which fervently hope will bring about my union with the woman of my choice. I cannot tell you what put it into my head that Levet was acting surreptitiously, all I know is that the thought did occur to me, and that it gave rise in my mind to the scheme which, with your permission, I will now put before you, with a view to soliciting your kind co-operation. Will you allow me to proceed?"

"Please do," Blakeney responded. "You interest me enormously."

"You are very kind."

Once more the lawyer paused. The noise in the room made conversation difficult. He leaned farther over the table, and went on still in a subdued tone of voice:

"Whether the man who was with Charles Levet just now, and whom he took into his house, was a genuine priest or not, I neither know nor care. He may be the fugitive Abbé Edgeworth for aught it matters to me. I am practically certain that it wasn't the doctor, but anyway he is just a pawn in the close game which I propose to play, a game, the ultimate stakes of which are my future welfare and success of my career. Old Levet has more money than you would think," he added unblushingly, "and Blanche, besides being very attractive—I am really in love with her—will have a considerable dot, whilst I..."

He gave a significant shrug and added: "Well! We understand one another, do we not, Monsieur le Professeur? With us black-coated workers money is the only ladder to success."

"Quite so," Blakeney assented imperturbably.

"Anyway, what I am going to do is this. I have just sent a letter to the Chief of Section at the Town Hall, denouncing the Levet family as harbouring a traitor in their house. I enjoy a great deal of prestige with our local authorities and they will take my word for it that the Levets' guest is a dangerous conspirator against the Republic. Now do you guess my purpose?"

"Not exactly."

"It is really quite simple. Just think for a moment how we shall all stand within the next few hours. Levet, his daughter, his son and his guest arrested. I, Louis Maurin, using my influence with the authorities to get the family liberated. Levet's gratitude expressed by granting me his daughter's hand in marriage. Surely you can see how splendidly it will all work."

"Not quite," Blakeney remarked after a slight pause.

"Where's the hitch?"

"I was thinking of the guest. Will your influence be extended towards his liberation also?"

"Oh!" the lawyer replied airily, "I am not going to trouble myself about him. If nothing is proved against him, if he is really just a constitutional priest called in to administer the sacraments to a dying woman, he will get his release without interference on my part."

"He may not."

The lawyer shrugged. "Anyway, he will have to take his chance. My dear friend," he went on with an affected sigh, "a great many heads will fall within the next few days, weeks, months perhaps; are we not on the eve of far bigger things than have occurred as yet? One head more or less...what does it matter?"

To this Blakeney made no immediate reply; and presently the young lawyer resumed, putting all the persuasiveness he could command into his tone:

"You will not refuse me your co-operation, will you, Monsieur le Professeur."

"You will pardon me," Blakeney responded, "but you have not yet told me what you desire me to do."

"Just for the moment, only to come with me as far as the Town Hall, and bear witness to the fact that old Levet introduced a man surreptitiously into his house this afternoon."

"But I don't know that he did."

Maurin shrugged. "Does that matter," he queried blandly, "between friends?"

Then, as Monsieur le Professeur made no comment on this amazing suggestion, he continued glibly:

"It is all perfectly simple, my dear Professeur, as you will see, and nothing that will happen need upset your over-sensitive conscience. I will merely call upon you to confirm with a word or two, my statement that Charles Levet introduced some one furtively into his house, at the very time when his wife was breathing her last. There will be no question of an oath or anything of the sort, just a few words. But we will both insist that Levet's actions were furtive. Won't we? I can reckon on you for this, can I not, my dear friend? I may call you my friend, may I not?"

"If you like."

"You really are most kind. And you will plead my cause with old Levet when my marriage with Blanche comes on the tapis presently, won't you, my friend? Funnily enough I felt you were going to be my friend the moment I sat down at this table opposite to you. But then Blanche had often spoken to me about you, and in what high regard her father held you...Well!" he concluded, after he had paused for breath for a few seconds, "what do you say?" and his eyes glowing and eager, fastened themselves on the other's face.

By way of an answer Blakeney rose.

"That the doors of the Town Hall will be closed against us, unless we hurry," he replied with a smile.

Maurin drew a deep sigh of satisfaction.

"Then you really are coming with me?" he exclaimed, and jumped to his feet. He beckoned to the waiter, and there ensued a friendly little dispute as to who should pay the bill, a dispute from which the lawyer gracefully retired, leaving his newly-found friend to settle both the bill and the gratuity. While he reached for his had and cloak he just went on talking, talking as if something in his brain had let loose a veritable flood-gate of eloquence. He talked and he talked, and never noticed that Monsieur le Professeur, in the interval of settling with the waiter, had scribbled a few lines on the back of the bill, and kept the crumpled bit of paper in the hollow of his hand. He piloted the voluble talker through the shrieking and gesticulating crowd as far as the door.

The next moment the two men were out in the Place. The fog seemed more dense than ever. As the Town Hall was at some distance from the Café Tison they started to walk briskly across the wide-open space. It was almost deserted, every one having taken refuge against the cold and the damp in the brilliantly-lighted restaurants and cafés: all except a group of three or four slouchy-looking fellows clad in the promiscuous garments affected by the irregular Republican Guard. They were standing outside the Café Tison, very much in the way of the customers who went in or out, and had to be jostled and pushed aside by Monsieur le Professeur before he and Louis Maurin could get past.