The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel - Baroness Orczy (best historical biographies .txt) 📗

their friend Hériot, he had run across the room, his hand was on the knob of the door⁠—the door that led to the antechamber and to freedom.

Bompard, Desgas, Jeanniot, Legros were at his heels, but he tore open the door, bounded across the threshold, and slammed it to with such a vigorous bang that those on the other side were brought to a momentary halt. That moment meant life and liberty to Blakeney; already he had crossed the antechamber. Quite coolly and quietly now he took out the key from the inner side of the main door and slipped it to the outside. The next second⁠—even as the four men rushed helter-skelter into the antechamber he was out on the landing and had turned the key in the door.

His prisoners were safely locked in⁠—in Hériot’s apartments⁠—and Sir Percy Blakeney, calmly and without haste, was descending the stairs of the house in the Rue Cocatrice.

The next morning Agnès de Lucines received, through an anonymous messenger, the packet of letters which would so gravely have compromised Arnould Fabrice. Though the weather was more inclement than ever, she ran out into the streets, determined to seek out the old Public Letter-Writer and thank him for his mediation with the English milor, who surely had done this noble action.

But the old scarecrow had disappeared.

A Fine Bit of Work I

“Sh!⁠ ⁠… sh!⁠ ⁠… It’s the Englishman. I’d know his footstep anywhere⁠—”

“God bless him!” murmured petite maman fervently.

Père Lenègre went to the door; he stepped cautiously and with that stealthy foot-tread which speaks in eloquent silence of daily, hourly danger, of anguish and anxiety for lives that are dear.

The door was low and narrow⁠—up on the fifth floor of one of the huge tenement houses in the Rue Jolivet in the Montmartre quarter of Paris. A narrow stone passage led to it⁠—pitch-dark at all times, but dirty, and evil-smelling when the concierge⁠—a free citizen of the new democracy⁠—took a week’s holiday from his work in order to spend whole afternoons either at the wineshop round the corner, or on the Place du Carrousel to watch the guillotine getting rid of some twenty aristocrats an hour for the glorification of the will of the people.

But inside the small apartment everything was scrupulously neat and clean. Petite maman was such an excellent manager, and Rosette was busy all the day tidying and cleaning the poor little home, which Père Lenègre contrived to keep up for wife and daughter by working fourteen hours a day in the government saddlery.

When Père Lenègre opened the narrow door, the entire framework of it was filled by the broad, magnificent figure of a man in heavy caped coat and high leather boots, with dainty frills of lace at throat and wrist, and elegant chapeau-bras held in the hand.

Père Lenègre at sight of him, put a quick finger to his own quivering lips.

“Anything wrong, vieux papa?” asked the newcomer lightly.

The other closed the door cautiously before he made reply. But petite maman could not restrain her anxiety.

“My little Pierre, milor?” she asked as she clasped her wrinkled hands together, and turned on the stranger her tear-dimmed restless eyes.

“Pierre is safe and well, little mother,” he replied cheerily. “We got him out of Paris early this morning in a coal cart, carefully hidden among the sacks. When he emerged he was black but safe. I drove the cart myself as far as Courbevoie, and there handed over your Pierre and those whom we got out of Paris with him to those of my friends who were going straight to England. There’s nothing more to be afraid of, petite maman,” he added as he took the old woman’s wrinkled hands in both his own; “your son is now under the care of men who would die rather than see him captured. So make your mind at ease, Pierre will be in England, safe and well, within a week.”

Petite maman couldn’t say anything just then because tears were choking her, but in her turn she clasped those two strong and slender hands⁠—the hands of the brave Englishman who had just risked his life in order to save Pierre from the guillotine⁠—and she kissed them as fervently as she kissed the feet of the Madonna when she knelt before her shrine in prayer.

Pierre had been a footman in the household of unhappy Marie Antoinette. His crime had been that he remained loyal to her in words as well as in thought. A hotheaded but nobly outspoken harangue on behalf of the unfortunate queen, delivered in a public place, had at once marked him out to the spies of the Terrorists as suspect of intrigue against the safety of the Republic. He was denounced to the Committee of Public Safety, and his arrest and condemnation to the guillotine would have inevitably followed had not the gallant band of Englishmen, known as the League of the Scarlet Pimpernel, succeeded in effecting his escape.

What wonder that petite maman could not speak for tears when she clasped the hands of the noble leader of that splendid little band of heroes? What wonder that Père Lenègre, when he heard that his son was safe murmured a fervent: “God bless you, milor, and your friends!” and that Rosette surreptitiously raised the fine caped coat to her lips, for Pierre was her twin-brother, and she loved him very dearly.

But already Sir Percy Blakeney had, with one of his characteristic cheery words, dissipated the atmosphere of tearful emotion which oppressed these kindly folk.

“Now, Papa Lenègre,” he said lightly, “tell me why you wore such a solemn air when you let me in just now.”

“Because, milor,” replied the old man quietly, “that d⁠⸺⁠d concierge, Jean Baptiste, is a black-hearted traitor.”

Sir Percy laughed, his merry, infectious laugh.

“You mean that while he has been pocketing bribes from me, he has denounced me to the Committee.”

Père Lenègre nodded: “I only