Читать книгу The Red Mass - Valentine Williams - Страница 13

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In grave perplexity Hector left the Section. The dark allusions of the humpback had made him vividly conscious of the appalling danger of his mission. He felt that the small square card which, like everybody else he saw, he wore beside the cockade in his hat, was his only shield. Once let the identity of Jean-François Charpentier be stripped from him and he would be utterly, irretrievably lost. But who was this Jean-François Charpentier? A young Frenchman making his way from Copenhagen to Paris, Mr. Gray had told him, whom the excise officers had found concealed in the cargo of a Danish brig in the Downs. They had clapped him in the prisoners-of-war camp at Dartmoor, but his papers they had retained against an emergency such as this. But what had he to do with the Citizen Commissary? And who, above all things, was their mutual friend?

Well, events must take their course. Whoever Charpentier was, he must go through to the end with his identity. Engstrom, who, Mr. Gray had assured him, would make all arrangements for getting him back to England with the proposals he had come to fetch, must, of course, be told of this complication. He would doubtless be able to furnish him with fresh papers for his return. And, having thus satisfactorily settled things in his mind, Hector made for the Palais-Royal—now christened the Palais-Égalité—to dine; for he had tasted nothing since the mail had stopped at Creil for the midday meal.

He knew Paris pretty well. He had often visited France. One of his earliest recollections was of being taken, a chubby urchin, by his grandfather, that awe-inspiring old aristocrat, the Marquis de Sainte-Valentine, to see His Majesty King Louis the Fifteenth at meat in his Château of Versailles. He retained a dim picture of a knot of people behind a golden barrier staring at a little periwigged old gentleman, a laced hat on his head, dining in solitary state off gold plate at a small table.

In later years he had often stayed with his mother at the family hôtel in the Place Royale with its great pink courtyard, its swarms of brilliantly liveried servants, its vast kitchens, its enormous stables. Where was all that pomp to-day?

His last visit had been in the spring of the Revolution, in '89, when he and Henry Venables, his companion on the grand tour, had made their bow at the Tuileries to poor, placid King Louis and his dainty Austrian queen. Strange to think that five brief years had swept that Court away and buried its glories in nameless graves!

The ci-devant Palais-Royal was as noisy as a fair. A band of music played in the garden, and the keepers of the open-air lottery tables and wheels of chance rent the air with their raucous boniments. The colonnades were densely crowded, and outside the cafés every table was taken. With some difficulty he found a seat in the Café des Milles Colonnes, where the excellence of his dinner and the choiceness of his bottle of Beaune taught him that, to any one with money, the hungriness of France was naught but a fable.

The Café des Milles Colonnes was very gay. Its gilt mirrors, torn from the salons of dead Philippe Égalité's palace, reflected a scene from which the sordidness of the Faubourg Saint-Honoré, as Hector had seen it that evening, was utterly banished. He was surrounded on every side by exquisites of both sexes, the men in brilliant silks and satins and the finest linen, abundantly perfumed, and the women lavishly frocked in the classical style that had lately become the fashion and that revealed their charms with an audacity that amazed him.

But, as he lingered over his wine in contemplation of the scene, it seemed to him that the note was forced. The abandon was too high, the laughter too loud. There was an air about this chattering, flirting throng as unreal as the ciphers on the paper money that bulged from the pockets of the waiters' aprons. It was as though every one there had vowed to forget for the evening that tall machine which, not a mile away, reared its scarlet posts to the star-spangled sky, in grim expectation of the morrow ...

His dinner cost him, with the tip to the waiter which the Republic, One and Indivisible, he noticed, had not abolished, five thousand livres, which, he reflected, in his grandfather's day, was about the monthly allowance of poor Uncle Sainte-Valentine who had perished on the scaffold. He donned his hat and strolled forth thoughtfully into the night.

Engstrom lodged in a house in the rue Vivienne, not a stone's throw from the headquarters of the Section Lepeletier, and within easy distance of Hector's hotel. This was the young man's next objective, for the fright he had received at the Convent of the Filles-Saint-Thomas had determined him to lose no time in getting in touch with the banker.

The door of Engstrom's house was open. At the door of her loge beneath the porte cochère the concierge sat on a chair knitting. A bright lamp lit up the neat little room behind her, and above her head, aroused no doubt by the light, a canary chirruped cheerfully in a cage. It was a pleasant, soothing picture of French domesticity.

'The Citoyen Engstrom?' said the old lady after demanding the young man's errand. 'On the third floor. But I don't think he has yet returned.'

It was an old house with a broad flight of downtrodden stone steps, black and greasy, that wound their way aloft. They were dimly lit by a light that fell from above through the well of the staircase.

Hector mounted to the third floor on which, above a brass plate inscribed 'Engstrom,' the handle of a bell protruded. He rang, and, after what seemed to be a long interval, a light shuffling footstep fell on his ear. Presently the door opened about half an inch.

'The Citizen Engstrom?' Hector demanded.

'He's not at home!' a quavering voice replied. The unseen ministrant would have closed the door had not Hector, foreseeing the movement, slipped his foot forward.

'You are a friend of the Citizen Engstrom?' the voice demanded.

'The friend of all oppressed!' Hector answered in a low voice.

Instantly the door swung back. An old woman in a mob-cap, a candle in her hand, stood there.

'Come in quickly, for the love of God!' she whispered.

Hector obeyed and noiselessly she closed the door behind him. Without a word the old woman led the way along a corridor and into a sitting-room, where, on a Buhl table, a lamp was burning. There she turned, and Hector saw that her face was grey with terror.

'Monsieur,' she whispered, 'he has not come back. Always he returns before dark!'

She had clutched her cheek with her hand which she now drew shuddering away.

'A misfortune has happened to him,' she moaned. 'I know it. All the evening I have sat here and waited for his step upon the stair. Yet he does not come!'

On the mantelpiece, above which a portrait hung, a great gilt clock ticked solemnly. Hector felt the old woman's distress gaining upon him. He made an effort to shake it off. He glanced at the clock.

'It's not yet half-past ten,' he said reassuringly.

The old woman wrung her hands.

'In the two years I've served him,' she wailed, 'I've never known him return as late as this. I have a feeling, M'sieu, that some evil has befallen him. I dreamed of bats last night, and that always foretells misfortune! Hark! There's some one at the door!'

She picked up her candle and crept away. Hector heard the front door open and the sound of a whispered conversation in the hall. Then came a wail of fear from the old woman and her light and trailing footstep went padding down the corridor.

The sitting-room door opened. A big man stood on the threshold. He had dark, burning eyes and a great black mustache. His face was contracted with fatigue and his caped cloak white with dust. Dully, suspiciously, he surveyed Hector. Then he closed the door and came into the room. With a jingle of spurs he walked across to Hector.

'Do you take snuff?' he asked.

The young man started.

'Certainly,' he replied, recovering himself swiftly. 'Permit me?'

And from his pocket he drew a scarlet snuff-box, and, flicking the lid up with his thumb, held it out to the other. The man's stern expression relaxed.

'So you've come,' he said.

He glanced round nervously at the door. The old woman was there in a poke-bonnet, a shawl about her shoulders.

'Bon Dieu de bon Dieu!' she mumbled. 'To plunge us all in disaster! I go, Messieurs!'

'Go, la mère!' replied the big man. 'And, as you value your life, don't come back!'

She padded softly away, and they heard the front door slam.

Then the big man turned to Hector.

'Something's happened to Engstrom,' he said rapidly. 'He was to meet me at the Café Conti by the Pont Neuf at six. He has never missed an appointment before. It was vital that he should see me. I've ridden all the way from Brussels.'

He glanced about him with a hunted look.

'He would never let me come here. But I thought he must be ill. And I daren't carry what I've brought about Paris with me. I've always reported to him before at his place in the rue des Petits Champs. He keeps a bookseller's shop, you know.'

'I thought he was a banker!' said Hector.

'Only in this house. His bank is on the entresol. In the rue des Petits Champs his name is Poirier! Grand Dieu, who's that?'

The bell at the front door had jangled furiously. Together the two men tiptoed into the corridor. Through the door they heard a voice whisper frantically:

'Open for the love of God!'

'Simon!' muttered the big man, and pulled back the latch.

A man came whirling in, bareheaded, breathless. With shaking hand he motioned to them to shut the door.

'Engstrom ...' he gasped.

'Not here,' said the big man, and drew him into the sitting-room.

'Now,' he said when they were gathered round the lamp.

'They took him this morning ... at the shop ... I was on my way to report to him ... I saw it all. I tried to get a word with him ... but they guarded him too close. He went before the Tribunal at noon ...'

He shrugged his shoulders with a despairing gesture.

'This evening ...' he began, and burst into tears.

The big man's brow darkened.

'Already?' he said half aloud. Then: 'Have they got any one else?'

Fiercely Simon flung up his head. Hector saw the tears glisten wet on his face in the lamplight.

'Van Brink, the cur. They took him at eight o'clock at his lodging. He has given this place away. I had it at the Section and went to the Café Conti to warn you. Jules told me you had come on here. Philippe, save yourself! They will be here any minute now!'

He sprang to his feet and made for the door.

'Are you coming?' he cried.

'In one instant!' said the big man quietly.

'Adieu!' cried the other.

'Simon, stop! There is something you must do!'

'Sauve qui peut! I have warned you ...'

He flashed away, and they heard the door slam. From his breast-pocket Philippe had taken a wad of flimsy paper which he held over the lamp until it kindled. He nursed the flame and watched the papers burn until they were a charred mass that he stamped beneath his feet into the carpet. Then he raised up the lamp and faced the portrait that hung above the mantelpiece.

'My poor friend!' he said.

Hector, looking over his shoulder, saw a big leonine head set in an aureole of auburn ringlets. It was the face of the quiet, proud man he had seen that evening on the way to the guillotine. He would have cried out in astonishment had not Philippe, putting down the lamp, laid his hand on his sleeve.

'Now,' he said, 'we must be quick. Come!'

He blew out the lamp and the room was plunged in darkness. From the hall a faint glimmer of light fell through the glass panels of the door. Suddenly, from the distance, a muffled report rang out, there was a shout, a shrill scream, and the thunder of feet on the stairs.

'Actum est,' said the big man and stood stock-still. He had a pistol in his hand.

'My friend,' he said composedly, 'we are too late. They are on the staircase already.'

The bell pealed wildly: they could hear the wires strain and jangle. Heavy hands beat on the door.

'Monsieur,' said the big man firmly, 'je vous salue!'

In the faint glow that from the doorway pierced the gloom, Hector saw his companion swiftly raise his weapon. Instinctively he snatched at his hand; but he was too late. There was a deafening report, and the big man, swaying, crashed dead to the floor, overturning table and lamp in his fall.

From the ground came the sound of something that gushed and gushed. A little swathe of black smoke hung in the air and the room reeked of burnt powder. Outside the front door the clamour redoubled.

Suddenly above the din a deep voice resounded.

'Ouvrez au nom de la loi!'