V
Five minutes or so later the three Marats could vaguely be seen recrossing the Place and making their way back to Le Bouffay, where Martin-Roget and Chauvelin still stood on the top of the stairs excited and expectant. At sight of the men Chauvelin ran down the steps to meet them.
"Well?" he queried in an eager whisper.
"We never saw them," replied Paul Friche gruffly, "though we could hear them clearly enough, talking, laughing and walking very rapidly toward the quay. Then suddenly the earth or the river swallowed them up. We saw and heard nothing more."
Chauvelin swore and a curious hissing sound escaped his thin lips.
"Don't be too disappointed, citizen," added the man with a coarse laugh, "my mate picked this up at the corner of the Ruelle, when, I fancy, we were pressing the aristos pretty closely."
He held out a small bundle of papers tied together with a piece of red ribbon: the bundle had evidently rolled in the mud, for the papers were covered with grime. Chauvelin's thin, claw-like fingers had at once closed over them.
"You must give me back those papers, citizen," said the man, "they are my booty. I can only give them up to citizen-captain Fleury."
"I'll give them to the citizen-captain myself," retorted Chauvelin. "For the moment you had best not leave your post of duty," he added more peremptorily, seeing that the man made as he would follow him.
"I take orders from no one except ..." protested the man gruffly.
"You will take them from me now," broke in Chauvelin with a sudden assumption of command and authority which sat with weird strangeness upon his thin shrunken figure. "Go back to your post at once, ere I lodge a complaint against you for neglect of duty, with the citizen proconsul."
He turned on his heel and, without paying further heed to the man and his mutterings, he remounted the stone stairs.
"No success, I suppose?" queried Martin-Roget.
"None," replied Chauvelin curtly.
He had the packet of papers tightly clasped in his hand. He was debating in his mind whether he would speak of them to his colleague or not.
"What did Friche say?" asked the latter impatiently.
"Oh! very little. He and his mates caught sight of the strangers and followed them as far as the quays. But they were walking very fast and suddenly the Marats lost their trace in the darkness. It seemed, according to Paul Friche, as if the earth or the night had swallowed them up."
"And was that all?"
"Yes. That was all."
"I wonder," added Martin-Roget with a light laugh and a careless shrug of his wide shoulders, "I wonder if you and I, citizen Chauvelin—and Paul Friche too for that matter—have been the victims of our nerves."
"I wonder," assented Chauvelin drily. And—quite quietly—he slipped the packet of papers in the pocket of his coat.
"Then we may as well adjourn. There is nothing else you wish to say to me about that enigmatic Scarlet Pimpernel of yours?"
"No—nothing."
"And you still would like to hear what the Kernogan wench will say and see how she will look when I put my final proposal before her?"
"If you will allow me."
"Then come," said Martin-Roget. "My sister's house is close by."