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

down here was in darkness once more, he groped his way to the foot of the stairs and slowly mounted to the floor above. V

He reached the first-floor landing. The door which led into Mother Théot’s apartments was on the latch, and Chauvelin had just stretched out his hand with a view to pushing it open, when the door swung out on its hinges, as if moved by an invisible hand, and a pleasant, mocking voice immediately behind him said, with grave politeness:

“Allow me, my dear M. Chambertin!”

XXV Four Days

What occurred during the next few seconds Chauvelin himself would have been least able to say. Whether he stepped of his own accord into the antechamber of Catherine Théot’s apartment, or whether an unseen hand pushed him in, he could not have told you. Certain it is that, when he returned to the full realisation of things, he was sitting on one of the benches, his back against the wall, whilst immediately in front of him, looking down on him through half-closed, lazy eyes, débonnair, well groomed, unperturbed, stood his arch-enemy, Sir Percy Blakeney.

The antechamber was gloomy in the extreme. Someone in the interval had lighted the tallow candles in the centre chandelier, and these shed a feeble, flickering light on the dank, bare walls, the carpetless floor, the shuttered windows; whilst a thin spiral of evil-smelling smoke wound its way to the blackened ceiling above.

Of Theresia Cabarrus there was not a sign. Chauvelin looked about him, feeling like a goaded animal shut up in a narrow space with its tormentor. He was making desperate efforts to regain his composure, above all he made appeal to that courage which was wont never to desert him. In truth, Chauvelin had never been a physical coward, nor was he afraid of death or outrage at the hands of the man whom he had so deeply wronged, and whom he had pursued with a veritable lust of hate. No! he did not fear death at the hands of the Scarlet Pimpernel. What he feared was ridicule, humiliation, those schemes⁠—bold, adventurous, seemingly impossible⁠—which he knew were already seething behind the smooth, unruffled brow of his arch-enemy, behind those lazy, supercilious eyes, which had the power to irritate his nerves to the verge of dementia.

This impudent adventurer⁠—no better than a spy, despite his aristocratic mien and air of lofty scorn⁠—this meddlesome English brigand, was the one man in the world who had, when he measured his prowess against him, invariably brought him to ignominy and derision, made him a laughingstock before those whom he had been wont to dominate; and at this moment, when once again he was being forced to look into those strangely provoking eyes, he appraised their glance as he would the sword of a proved adversary, and felt as he did so just that same unaccountable dread of them which had so often paralysed his limbs and atrophied his brain whenever mischance flung him into the presence of his enemy.

He could not understand why Theresia Cabarrus had deserted him. Even a woman, if she happened to be a friend, would by her presence have afforded him moral support.

“You are looking for Mme. de Fontenay, I believe, dear M. Chambertin,” Sir Percy said lightly, as if divining his thoughts. “The ladies⁠—ah, the ladies! They add charm, piquancy, eh? to the driest conversations. Alas!” he went on with mock affectation, “that Mme. de Fontenay should have fled at first sound of my voice! Now she hath sought refuge in the old witch’s lair, there to consult the spirits as to how best she can get out again, seeing that the door is now locked⁠ ⁠… Deemed awkward, a locked door, when a pretty woman wants to be on the other side. What think you, M. Chambertin?”

“I only think, Sir Percy,” Chauvelin contrived to retort, calling all his wits and all his courage to aid him in his humiliating position, “I only think of another pretty woman, who is in the room just above our heads and who would also be mightily glad to find herself the other side of a locked door.”

“Your thoughts,” Sir Percy retorted with a light laugh, “are always so ingenuous, my dear M. Chambertin. Strangely enough, mine just at this moment run on the possibility⁠—not a very unlikely one, you will admit⁠—of shaking the breath out of your ugly little body, as I would that of a rat.”

“Shake, my dear Sir Percy, shake!” Chauvelin riposted with well-simulated calm. “I grant you that I am a puny rat and you are the most magnificent of lions; but even if I lie mangled and breathless on this stone floor at your feet, Lady Blakeney will still be a prisoner in our hands.”

“And you will still be wearing the worst-cut pair of breeches it has ever been my bad fortune to behold,” Sir Percy retorted, quite unruffled. “Lud love you, man! Have you guillotined all the good tailors in Paris?”

“You choose to be flippant, Sir Percy,” Chauvelin rejoined dryly. “But, though you have chosen for the past few years to play the role of a brainless nincompoop, I have cause to know that behind your affectations there lurks an amount of sound common sense.”

“Lud, how you flatter me, my dear sir!” quoth Sir Percy airily. “I vow you had not so high an opinion of me last time I had the honour of conversing with you. It was at Nantes; do you remember?”

“There, as elsewhere, you succeeded in circumventing me, Sir Percy.”

“No, no!” he protested. “Not in circumventing you. Only in making you look a demmed fool!”

“Call it that, if you like, sir,” Chauvelin admitted, with an indifferent shrug of the shoulders. “Luck has favoured you many a time. As I had the honour to tell you, you have had the laugh of us in the past, and no doubt you are under the impression that you will have it again this time.”

“I am such a believer