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When the sounds of the protesting, threatening Thuillier's removal had at last faded, André-Louis, who had risen, addressed himself to Foulard.

'What do you make of it, Citizen-Mayor?'

The paunchy little man washed his unclean hands in the air and wagged his head in grave and sorrowful condemnation.

'I do not like it. I tell you frankly, Citizen-Agent, I do not like it.'

'What don't you like? Be clear, man.'

The Mayor jumped. 'I don't like the conduct of Thuillier. It is not frank. It is not the conduct of a patriot.'

'Ha! You perceive that, too. I was sure from the moment I saw you that I could count upon your intelligence. Though it isn't intelligence that is lacking in Blérancourt. It's loyalty, zeal, patriotism. You conspire here, and the President of your committee shelters the conspirators.'

'You think that? You believe that?'

'Don't you?' boomed Boissancourt.

'I don't know what to think; what to believe.'

André-Louis smiled unpleasantly.

'We must find you something. We may find it among that rascal's papers. Come, citizen. Show me the way to Thuillier's house. You will come with us, Boissancourt.'

Thuillier had his lodging at the end of the village in a house that was set back in a tangled, neglected garden, very desolate in its present December nakedness. It was a ramshackle place kept by the Widow Grasset and her maiden sister, both women in middle life. Thuillier occupied two rooms on the ground-floor. A brief survey of the bedroom justified André-Louis in dismissing it. He passed to the sitting-room, where evidently Thuillier despatched the matters concerned with his official position. There were some books on a shelf. André-Louis looked them over cursorily; a Contrat Social, some volumes of Voltaire's Siècle de Louis XIV, one or two works on philosophy, a translation of Ovid, a copy of the Roman de la Rose, and many others, making up a curious assortment.

A writing-table stood in the window. There were some papers upon it. He looked through them. They were of no particular account. He opened the two drawers set in it. There was nothing in them of the least consequence.

Then, the Mayor following him ever, and Boissancourt bringing up the rear, he passed to a mahogany bureau that stood in a recess of the wall. It was locked.

Having broken it open, André-Louis sat down to go through its contents. The Mayor by his invitation pulled up a chair so as to sit beside him and participate in his investigation. Boissancourt, standing on his other side, assisted as directed.

The December daylight had long since faded, and they had been working for three hours by candle-light in that chill, untidy room before they brought their labours to a close. From that rigorous sifting had resulted a little bundle of papers, which Boissancourt tied together. Then the bureau was closed again, and by André-Louis's orders the Mayor affixed his seals to it. Similarly they sealed up the two rooms, informing the startled Widow Grasset that they were not to be opened save upon an official order from the Committee of Public Safety or by its accredited representatives.

Back in his room at the Bonnet Rouge, where meanwhile a fire had been kindled to thaw the august limbs of the Citizen-Agent, André-Louis went more closely over the appropriated documents with the Mayor, whilst Boissancourt in his capacity of secretary sat making such notes as were required by his master.

The great prize was a letter from Saint-Just, which Thuillier had incautiously kept in spite of a note at foot enjoining him instantly to destroy it. It was a month old, its terms were deliberately vague, and it made no mention of Thorin by name. But they were not so vague that, when read in the light of subsequent events, they left very much doubt as to the charge upon which Thorin had been arrested.

If this Pantaloon (Saint-Just wrote) continues to squeal as you now report, grave inconvenience may result to me. Purity of life is so popular at this present that I have embraced the advocacy of it. That should be enough for you. You will infer the rest, and understand the inconveniences. Something must be done. No use to write to me to order things differently here. Even if I were to do so, this man could still be mischievous. His silence must be ensured. I leave it to your wits to discover the way. Take counsel at need with B. S. J. You may both depend upon my gratitude.

Greetings and fraternity.

Your lifelong friend

F. Saint-Just

On matters hinted in this letter, André-Louis proceeded to an examination of the Mayor.

'Pantaloon in the comedy is always a poor cuckold. That a cuckold is in question is confirmed by the next sentence. What cuckold here in Blérancourt could be inconvenient to the Representative Saint-Just?'

This was putting a pistol to the Mayor's head. However fearful Foulard might be, he could not elude it.

'There was Thorin.'

'Thorin!' André-Louis affected astonishment. 'Thorin! But that is the name of this conspirator.'

'Just so,' said the Mayor.

'The man whose silence must be ensured. Do you know, Citizen-Mayor, that it begins to look as if there was here a conspiracy of quite another sort. Thuillier, who discovered it, cannot tell us what it was about, or who was in it, save this unfortunate Thorin. What is the truth about Thorin? What is his story?'

Out it came. It was known in the village that Saint-Just had seduced Thorin's wife. Since his going to Paris, she had disappeared, and it was rumoured that she had followed him, and that he kept her there.

Boissancourt wrote briskly, reducing the statement to writing.

André-Louis offered a comment. 'A nice story concerning one who has "embraced the advocacy of purity, which is now so popular."' He passed on.

'Then this B. S. J. There are two notes here signed with these initials. In one B. S. J. suggests that some person or other unnamed should be placed under arrest. In the other, as if answering a question, he writes: "How do I know what you should do with him? In your place I would send him to Soissons to be guillotined." That may allude to the unfortunate Thorin. Who is this B. S. J.? Do you surmise?'

'It must be Bontemps; a fellow named Bontemps who lives in Chaume, who calls himself Bontemps Saint-Just.'

'Calls himself? What do you mean?'

'He is a relative of the Representative Saint-Just. It'll be his right to call himself that, no doubt. But he's more generally known as Bontemps.'

'What's his station in life?'

'He'll be a horse-leech by trade. But he's farming now. He's come by a deal of émigré property lately.' The Mayor seemed almost to sneer.

André-Louis looked up, sharply alert. 'What do you mean with your "come-by"? He's bought it, I suppose.'

'I suppose he has. But I never heard tell that he had any money.'

Keener grew the eyes of André-Louis. 'This is interesting. The fellow has no money. Yet he buys land.'

'Oh, a deal of land, all round La Beauce. A deal of land.'

The Citizen-Agent was thoughtfully silent awhile.

'It might be as well to have a talk with this Bontemps Saint-Just,' he said at last. 'He had better explain these notes.' Then he changed the subject. 'To return to Thorin, what do you know about him?'

'Nothing to his good. A ne'er-do-well, a drunkard, a wife-beater. Small blame to his wife for going off with the Citizen Saint-Just. And that's why so little has been heard of it. No one was sorry when he was laid by the heels.'

André-Louis was stern. 'Whatever he may have been does not lessen the offence of swearing away his life on a false charge.'

'I am not saying so, Citizen-Agent,' quavered the Mayor.

'What relations does he possess?'

'A married sister. She's over in Chaume, too. And there's a cousin of his in the village here.'

'Ah!' André-Louis stood up. 'Let them wait until tomorrow. It is close upon midnight. You will seek me here in the morning at nine o'clock, Citizen-Mayor. We shall have a busy day before us. Boissancourt, put these papers away in safety. Good-night, Citizen-Mayor.'

Foulard took his departure, a weary man, glad to escape at last from the presence of this terrible agent of the Committee of Public Safety.

André-Louis and Boissancourt smiled at each other.

'By God, you're brisk!' said Boissancourt.

'It's in the part of Scaramouche. He succeeds by forestalling. It was imperative to arrest Thuillier at once, so as to prevent him from communicating with Paris. The rest was the reward of virtue, and the highest reward of all was to discover the end of this thread that leads to the Citizen Bontemps. We should find there far more than ever I hoped or suspected when I came to Blérancourt.'

They did. They rode out to Chaume on the following morning, accompanied by the Mayor, the Commandant, and six troopers of the National Guard. Soon after ten they were at the gates of the diminutive but elegant château which was one of the recent acquisitions of Bontemps and wherein he had taken up his residence. Its original owner, the Vicomte de la Beauce, had been guillotined some months ago, and the legitimate heir was somewhere in exile.

Bontemps himself emerged at the clatter of their arrival in the courtyard. Dressed like a peasant, he was a young man of thirty, tall and vigorous and with a face that was everywhere full save in the chin. The result was a rather foolish and weakly expression. But there was no weakness in the terms he used, when the Commandant announced to him that, by order of the Committee of Public Safety, he was under arrest. Having exploded into a succession of vehement minatory questions, such as whether they had by any chance gone mad, whether they had counted the cost of what they did, whether they were aware of his relationship with the Representative Saint-Just, what they thought the representative would have to say with them for this egregious error, he came at last to a relevant demand to know the grounds upon which he was arrested.

André-Louis stood truculently before him. He had cocked his round hat in front and plastered the tricolour cockade upon the face of it. 'The grounds will be fully established by the time we have gone through your papers.'

The chinless countenance of Bontemps changed colour and went slack. But in a moment he had rallied.

'If you depend on that, it means you have no charge. How can you arrest me without formulating a charge? You are abusing your authority, if, indeed, you have any. You are committing an outrage, for which you shall answer.'

'You know too much law for an honest man,' said André-Louis. 'And, anyway, it's out of date. Have you never heard of the Law of Suspects? We arrest you under that. On suspicion.'

'You won't allay it by violence,' said Boissancourt. 'Best take it quietly.'

Bontemps appealed to the Mayor. The Mayor answered him in a paraphrase of the words of Boissancourt, and Bontemps, growing prudently sullen, was locked in a room with a guard at the door and another under the window.

André-Louis wasted no time in questioning the two men and the elderly woman who made up the household of Bontemps. He desired of them no more than an indication of where the Citizen Bontemps kept his papers. They spent three hours ransacking them, the Mayor and Boissancourt assisting André-Louis in his search. When it was complete, and André-Louis had found what he sought, certain notes and one or two letters relating to the purchase of the La Beauce lands, they dined on the best that the little château could supply them: an omelette, a dish of partridges, a couple of bottles of the best wine in Bontemps's well-stocked cellar.

'He's just a damned aristocrat, it seems, this Bontemps,' was all the thanks André-Louis bestowed on the household for that excellent repast.

Then he had the table cleared, and improvised a tribunal in the pleasant dining-room, which was brightened by the wintry sunshine. Writing-materials were placed on the table. André-Louis disposed himself in an armchair before it, with Boissancourt pen in hand on his right, and the Mayor of Blérancourt on his left.

Bontemps, pale, ill-at-ease and sullen, was brought in under guard. The Commandant lounged in the background, an official spectator.

The examination began. Bontemps was formally asked his name, age, condition, place of abode, and occupation, and his answers were set down by Boissancourt. To the last question he replied that he was a proprietor and farmer.

'How long have you been that?' was the inconvenient question.

Bontemps hesitated then answered. 'For the last year.'

'And before that? What were you?'

'A horse-leech.'

André-Louis looked at him appraisingly. 'I understand that your patrimony was negligible. You are a young man, Citizen Bontemps. How long did you practise as a horse-leech?'

'Five or six years.'

'Hardly the time in which to amass a fortune. But you were thrifty, I suppose. You saved money. How much did you save?'

Bontemps shrugged ill-humouredly. 'What the devil do I know what I saved? I keep no accounts.'

'On the contrary, I have a good many accounts before me here which you have kept. Don't waste my time, citizen. Answer me. How much did you save?'

Bontemps became rebellious. 'What is your right to question me? You're a damned spy of the Committee's, not a judge. You have no authority to try me. It may be within your powers to arrest me, though I doubt even that. And, anyway, when the Citizen-Representative Saint-Just comes to hear of it, you'll have a bad quarter of an hour, I promise you. Meanwhile, my friend, the most you can do, the most you dare do, is to send me to Paris for trial. Send me, then. Send me, and be damned to you! For I am answering none of your questions. Citizen-Mayor, are you going to abet this fellow? Name of God! You had better go carefully. You had better be warned. The guillotine goes briskly in Paris. You may come to acquaintance with it for this outrage. The Citizen-Representative Saint-Just will require a strict account of you. That's not a man with whom it's safe to trifle, as you should know.'

He paused, flushed now with the excitement that had welled up in him whilst he declaimed.

André-Louis spoke quietly to Boissancourt. 'Set it all down. Every word of it.' He waited until the pretended secretary had ceased to write, then he turned again to the prisoner. He spoke for once very quietly, without any of the truculence he had hitherto employed. Perhaps because of the contrast his tone was the more impressive.

'You labour under an error based on the old forms. I have said that you know too much law, but that it is out-of-date. If you are an honest man, you will give me every help in deciding whether you are to be sent for trial or not to Soissons. For that is where you will be sent. Not to Paris. The guillotine goes just as briskly in Soissons. As for the Citizen-Representative Saint-Just, upon whose protection you seem to count, you are not to suppose that under the present rule of Fraternity and Equality there is any man in the State with power to protect a malefactor.' His tone hardened again. 'I have said that your notions are out-of-date. You seem under the impression that we are still living in the age of the despots. One other thing. Let me tell you that unless you can dispel the suspicions to which these papers of yours give rise, unless you can satisfactorily explain certain unfavourable circumstances which they suggest, the Citizen-Representative Saint-Just will be fully occupied in answering for himself.' With a sudden fierceness, he added, bringing his fist down upon the table as he spoke: 'The Republic is no respector of persons. Get that into your head, Citizen Bontemps. Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity are not idle words.'

The Mayor mumbled eager agreement. He went on to urge the prisoner to answer, and to clear himself.

'I can't perceive,' said André-Louis, 'why you should hesitate, unless it is out of some false sense of loyalty. False, because no loyalty can save the principal offender. All that you can accomplish by silence and resistance is to find yourself convicted as a full accessory.'

Bontemps was not merely cowed; he was visibly frightened. André-Louis's fierce threat shook his confidence in the protection which Saint-Just might be able to afford him. If that protection were removed, then was he lost, indeed.

'Name of God!' he broke out. 'Of what is it that you accuse me? You have not told me even that. I have done nothing for myself.'

'You described yourself as a proprietor and farmer. I desire to know the source of the wealth which has enabled you to acquire these extensive tracts of land in La Beauce.'

'I described myself wrongly, then.' Fear squeezed the truth from him. 'A farmer, yes. I have become a farmer. It is more lucrative than being a horse-leech. But a proprietor, no. I am an agent, no more. What use to question me? You have my papers. They will have shown you that I am no more than an agent.'

'Whose agent?'

Bontemps still hesitated for a moment. He wrung his hands. Although the air of the room was so cold that their breathing made a mist upon it, yet there were beads of sweat on his pale, bulging brow below the straggle of red-brown hair. At last he answered, 'The Citizen-Representative Saint-Just's.' As if to excuse the betrayal wrung from him, he added, 'The papers must have shown it.'

André-Louis nodded. 'They do. At least, they indicate it very strongly.' Again he waited for Boissancourt to finish writing.

'In the course of the last year, you appear to have received moneys which will aggregate to close upon half a million francs if we make the computation reducing all to the present depreciated values of the Republic's currency.'

'If you compute it in that way, I suppose it would amount to about that figure.'

'One particularly heavy remittance of a hundred thousand francs reached you only a month ago.'

'Yes. Just about a month ago.'

'On the 7th of Frimaire, to be exact.'

'If you have the date, why question me?'

'This money was sent to you from Strasbourg, I think.'

'I don't know.'

'You know whence the Citizen Saint-Just wrote. For it was he who sent it to you, was it not?'

'Yes. It came from him. It came from Strasbourg, I believe. Yes. Anything else?'

André-Louis sat back. 'Set it all down, Boissancourt. Every word of it. It is important.' He turned to the Mayor. 'I am discovering much more than I bargained for; a conspiracy of quite another sort from that which I came to investigate. At the beginning of Frimaire the Citizen Saint-Just was in Strasbourg. He was levying heavy punitive fines there. Gold was flowing into his hands to be held in trust by him for the national treasury, money destined to relieve the sufferings of the faithful people. The Citizen Saint-Just appears to have misappropriated some of this to his own uses. That is what emerges from this investigation. You might add a note to that effect, Boissancourt, for reference later. And take care of these documents. They supply the evidence.' He paused, considering for a moment. 'That, I think, will do for the moment. I have no more questions. You may remove the prisoner.'

Boissancourt finished writing, and presented the minute of the examination to André-Louis. He read it carefully, and signed it. Then he passed it to the Mayor for his counter-signature, which was supplied so soon as the Mayor had also satisfied himself that the statement was exact. He looked pale and scared when he set down the pen.

'Name of a name! You have stirred up some terrible matters, citizen.'

'And it's my belief we are only at the beginning of them.'

The Mayor shivered. After all, the sunlight had passed from the room, and it was very cold there. 'We are treading very dangerous ground, citizen.'

André-Louis stood up. 'Very dangerous to malefactors,' he answered with a hardness that reassured the Mayor. 'Very dangerous to false patriots who cheat the Republic of her dues, who abuse their office to serve private interests. There is no danger to any other. The Nation will know how to reward those who labour to destroy corruption. There should be great things in store for you, Citizen-Mayor. I hope that you deserve your good fortune.'

'I have always been a good patriot.'

'I am glad to hear it. Do your duty and fear nothing. Fiat officium, ruat coelum. Let us be going. You will order the Commandant to bring along this fellow Bontemps, and to bestow him safely in the gaol at Blérancourt until we send for him.'