The Triumph of the Scarlet Pimpernel - Baroness Orczy (the little red hen read aloud .txt) 📗

“I know that,” the old woman rejoined dryly. “If she escapes ’twill not be through my connivance.”

“In the service of the State,” Chauvelin riposted, “even carelessness becomes a crime.”

Catherine Théot was silent for a moment or two, pressed her thin lips together; then rejoined quite quietly:

“She’ll not escape. Have no fear, citizen Chauvelin.”

“That’s brave! And now, tell me what has become of the coalheaver Rateau?”

“Oh, he comes and goes. You told me to encourage him.”

“Yes.”

“So I give him potions for his cough. He has one foot in the grave.”

“Would he had both!” Chauvelin broke in savagely. “That man is a perpetual menace to my plans. It would have been so much better if we could have sent him last April to the guillotine.”

“It was in your hands,” Mother Théot retorted. “The Committee reported against him. His measure was full enough. Aiding that execrable Scarlet Pimpernel to escape⁠ ⁠… ! Name of a name! it should have been enough!”

“It was not proved that he did aid the English spies,” Chauvelin retorted moodily. “And Foucquier-Tinville would not arraign him. He vowed it would anger the people⁠—the rabble⁠—of which Rateau himself forms an integral part. We cannot afford to anger the rabble these days, it seems.”

“And so Rateau, the asthmatic coalheaver, walked out of prison a free man, whilst my neophytes were dragged up to the guillotine, and I was left without means of earning an honest livelihood!” Mother Théot concluded with a doleful sigh.

“Honest?” Chauvelin exclaimed, with a sarcastic chuckle. Then, seeing that the old witch was ready to lose her temper, he quickly added: “Tell me more about Rateau. Does he often come here?”

“Yes; very often. He must be in my anteroom now. He came directly he was let out of prison, and has haunted this place ever since. He thinks I can cure him of his asthma, and as he pays me well⁠—”

“Pays you well?” Chauvelin broke in quickly. “That starveling?”

“Rateau is no starveling,” the old woman asserted. “Many an English gold piece hath he given me.”

“But not of late?”

“No later than yesterday.”

Chauvelin swore viciously.

“Then he is still in touch with that cursed Englishman!”

Mother Théot shrugged her shoulders.

“Does one ever know which is the Englishman and which is the asthmatic Rateau?” she queried, with a dry laugh.

Whereupon a strange thing happened⁠—so strange indeed that Chauvelin’s next words turned to savage curses, and that Mother Théot, white to the lips, her knees shaking under her, tiny beads of perspiration rising beneath her scanty locks, had to hold on to the table to save herself from falling.

“Name of a name of a dog!” Chauvelin muttered hoarsely, whilst the old woman, shaken by that superstitious dread which she liked to arouse in her clients, could only stare at him and mutely shake her head.

And yet nothing very alarming had occurred. Only a man had laughed, light-heartedly and long; and the sound of that laughter had come from somewhere near⁠—the next room probably, or the landing beyond Mother Théot’s anteroom. It had come low and distinct, slightly muffled by the intervening wall. Nothing in truth to frighten the most nervous child!

A man had laughed. One of Mother Théot’s clients probably, who in the company of a friend chose to wile away the weary hour of waiting on the sybil by hilarious conversation. Of course, that was it! Chauvelin, cursing himself now for his cowardice, passed a still shaking hand across his brow, and a wry smile distorted momentarily his thin, set lips.

“One of your clients is of good cheer,” he said with well-assumed indifference.

“There is no one in the anteroom at this hour,” the old hag murmured under her breath. “Only Rateau⁠ ⁠… and he is too scant of breath to laugh⁠ ⁠… he⁠ ⁠…”

But Chauvelin no longer heard what she had to say. With an exclamation which no one who heard it could have defined, he turned on his heel and almost ran out of the room.

The antechamber, wide and long, ran the whole length of Mother Théot’s apartment. Her witch’s lair and the room where she had just had her interview with Chauvelin gave directly on it on the one side, and two other living rooms on the other. At one end of the antechamber there were two windows, usually kept closely shuttered; and at the other was the main entrance door, which led to landing and staircase.

The antechamber was empty. It appeared to mock Chauvelin’s excitement, with its grey-washed walls streaked with grime, its worm-eaten benches and tarnished chandelier. Mother Théot, voluble and quaking with fear, was close at his heels. Curtly he ordered her to be gone; her mutterings irritated him, her obvious fear of something unknown grated unpleasantly on his nerves. He cursed himself for his cowardice, and cursed the one man who alone in this world had the power to unnerve him.

“I was dreaming, of course,” he muttered aloud to himself between his teeth. “I have that arch-devil, his laugh, his voice, his affectations, on the brain!”

He was on the point of going to the main door, in order to peer out on the landing or down the stairs, when he heard his name called immediately behind him. Theresia Cabarrus was standing under the lintel of the door which gave on the sybil’s sanctum, her delicate hand holding back the portière.

“Citizen Chauvelin,” she said, “I was waiting for you.”

“And I, citoyenne,” he retorted gruffly, “had in truth forgotten you.”

“Mother Théot left me alone for a while, to commune with the spirits,” she explained.

“Ah!” he riposted, slightly sarcastic. “With what result?”

“To help you further, citizen Chauvelin,” she replied; “if you have need of me.”

“Ah!” he exclaimed with a savage curse. “In truth, I have need of every willing hand that will raise itself against mine enemy. I have need of you, citizeness; of that old witch; of Rateau, the coalheaver; of every patriot who will sit and watch this house, to which we have brought