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

heard it this morning,” he said, “from one or two threatening words the treacherous brute let fall. He knows that you lodge in the Place des Trois Maries, and that you come here frequently. I would have given my life to warn you then and there,” continued the old man with touching earnestness, “but I didn’t know where to find you. All I knew was that you were looking after Pierre.”

Even while the man spoke there darted from beneath the Englishman’s heavy lids a quick look like a flash of sudden and brilliant light out of the lazy depths of his merry blue eyes; it was one of those glances of pure delight and exultation which light up the eyes of the true soldier when there is serious fighting to be done.

“La, man,” he said gaily, “there was no cause to worry. Pierre is safe, remember that! As for me,” he added with that wonderful insouciance which caused him to risk his life a hundred times a day with a shrug of his broad shoulders and a smile upon his lips; “as for me, I’ll look after myself, never fear.”

He paused awhile, then added gravely: “So long as you are safe, my good Lenègre, and petite maman, and Rosette.”

Whereupon the old man was silent, petite maman murmured a short prayer, and Rosette began to cry. The hero of a thousand gallant rescues had received his answer.

“You, too, are on the black list, Père Lenègre?” he asked quietly.

The old man nodded.

“How do you know?” queried the Englishman.

“Through Jean Baptiste, milor.”

“Still that demmed concierge,” muttered Sir Percy.

“He frightened petite maman with it all this morning, saying that he knew my name was down on the Sectional Committee’s list as a ‘suspect.’ That’s when he let fall a word or two about you, milor. He said it is known that Pierre has escaped from justice, and that you helped him to it.

“I am sure that we shall get a domiciliary visit presently,” continued Père Lenègre, after a slight pause. “The gendarmes have not yet been, but I fancy that already this morning early I saw one or two of the Committee’s spies hanging about the house, and when I went to the workshop I was followed all the time.”

The Englishman looked grave: “And tell me,” he said, “have you got anything in this place that may prove compromising to any of you?”

“No, milor. But, as Jean Baptiste said, the Sectional Committee know about Pierre. It is because of my son that I am suspect.”

The old man spoke quite quietly, very simply, like a philosopher who has long ago learned to put behind him the fear of death. Nor did petite maman cry or lament. Her thoughts were for the brave milor who had saved her boy; but her fears for her old man left her dry-eyed and dumb with grief.

There was silence in the little room for one moment while the angel of sorrow and anguish hovered round these faithful and brave souls, then the Englishman’s cheery voice, so full of spirit and merriment, rang out once more⁠—he had risen to his full, towering height, and now placed a kindly hand on the old man’s shoulder:

“It seems to me, my good Lenègre,” he said, “that you and I haven’t many moments to spare if we mean to cheat those devils by saving your neck. Now, petite maman,” he added, turning to the old woman, “are you going to be brave?”

“I will do anything, milor,” she replied quietly, “to help my old man.”

“Well, then,” said Sir Percy Blakeney in that optimistic, lighthearted yet supremely authoritative tone of which he held the secret, “you and Rosette remain here and wait for the gendarmes. When they come, say nothing; behave with absolute meekness, and let them search your place from end to end. If they ask you about your husband say that you believe him to be at his workshop. Is that clear?”

“Quite clear, milor,” replied petite maman.

“And you, Père Lenègre,” continued the Englishman, speaking now with slow and careful deliberation, “listen very attentively to the instructions I am going to give you, for on your implicit obedience to them depends not only your own life but that of these two dear women. Go at once, now, to the Rue Ste. Anne, round the corner, the second house on your right, which is numbered thirty-seven. The porte-cochère stands open, go boldly through, past the concierge’s box, and up the stairs to apartment number twelve, second floor. Here is the key of the apartment,” he added, producing one from his coat pocket and handing it over to the old man. “The rooms are nominally occupied by a certain Maître Turandot, maker of violins, and not even the concierge of the place knows that the hunchbacked and snuffy violin-maker and the meddlesome Scarlet Pimpernel, whom the Committee of Public Safety would so love to lay by the heels, are one and the same person. The apartment, then, is mine; one of the many which I occupy in Paris at different times,” he went on. “Let yourself in quietly with this key, walk straight across the first room to a wardrobe, which you will see in front of you. Open it. It is hung full of shabby clothes; put these aside, and you will notice that the panels at the back do not fit very closely, as if the wardrobe was old or had been badly put together. Insert your fingers in the tiny aperture between the two middle panels. These slide back easily: there is a recess immediately behind them. Get in there; pull the doors of the wardrobe together first, then slide the back panels into their place. You will be perfectly safe there, as the house is not under suspicion at present, and even if the revolutionary guard, under some meddlesome sergeant or other, chooses to pay it a surprise visit, your hiding-place will