"WOULD YOU MURDER ME?"
"If you make one movement," she replied, "Marat's fate will be yours." He cringed further away from the muzzle of the weapon that stared him in the face. With one hand she folded up the document and put it in the bosom of her dress, all the while keeping the pistol aimed steadily at him.
"Now," she continued coolly, "you have the key of the door. Make no movement," she added quickly, bringing the pistol still nearer him, "but tell me where to find it."
"It is in the door now," he snarled.
She came cautiously around the corner of the desk, still keeping the weapon leveled at his head.
He rose to his feet and sprang toward her. The pistol snapped. He caught her by the wrist. Then pinning both her arms to her side with his arms about her waist he breathed in her ear:—
"You cannot fire a pistol that is not loaded, though you did startle me. Now give me that paper."
Edmé did not speak, but struggled desperately to break from his grasp. She determined that he might kill her before she would give back the paper. So fiercely did she struggle that he had to exert all his strength to hold her.
"I'll have that paper again if I have to strangle you to get it!" he muttered through his teeth. He succeeded in holding down both arms with one of his, leaving his left arm free.
Before he could make use of it, he felt himself seized from behind. His nerves, strained by his previous fright, gave way completely at this unexpected attack. Uttering a cry, he released his hold completely.
"Save yourself; I will not hold you to your promise!" cried a voice. Edmé waited to hear nothing more, but darted swiftly from the room, leaving the baffled Robespierre confronted by La Liberté.
For a moment he stood still, his surprise rendering him incapable of speech or action. La Liberté walked jauntily to the door through which Edmé had just vanished, locked it, and stuck the key in her belt beside the knife she always wore there.
"Do you know what you are doing, you mad creature?" cried Robespierre, running to the door and putting his hand upon the latch. "Unlock this door at once."
"Wait a moment; I have something to say to you," was La Liberté's rejoinder.
"Give me that key instantly, do you hear?" he yelled, stamping his foot upon the floor. "You do not know what you are doing."
"I know," said La Liberté, nodding her head. "I have seen and heard everything; I have been watching you from the door of the back staircase."
"The back staircase!" exclaimed Robespierre, starting toward it.
"You need not trouble to go to it. I locked that door when I came in."
Robespierre came toward her, furious with passion. "I will have none of your escapades," he said fiercely; "give me that key or I will"—
"Keep off! keep off!" cried out La Liberté, bounding lightly out of his reach with a little mocking laugh. "Don't catch me about the waist; I carry my sting there."
"You wasp! I will crush you!" he cried out, foaming with rage.
"Better take care how you handle wasps," was her rejoinder as she perched herself upon the edge of a desk and shook her brown curls defiantly at him.
"Come, Liberté," he said, trying a coaxing tone, although his anger almost choked him; "I know you will open the door at once when I tell you that woman has obtained from me by a skillful ruse a pardon in blank. I don't know whose name will be filled in. Perhaps some great enemy of the Republic will be set at liberty, unless I can send word at once to the conciergerie and forestall it."
"I know who will be liberated," sang La Liberté, swinging her feet.
"You do!" vociferated Robespierre in genuine astonishment. "Is this a plot? Are you concerned in it?" And he came toward her, his small eyes winking rapidly.
"You don't get it yet," laughed La Liberté, sliding over to the other side of the desk. "I am concerned in enough of a plot to keep you from sending to the scaffold a man to whom I've taken a fancy. I do not very often take a particular interest in any one person, but when I do, it is lasting." And she regarded him airily from her point of vantage.
"I'll send you to the guillotine," hissed Robespierre between his teeth, striking his clenched fist upon the desk in front of him. "I'll have you arrested to-night. I'll bear with you no longer. I have permitted you to swagger around in public, to come into the Jacobin Club and flourish your pistols, because it amused the populace, and I laughed with them at your antics; but now you have overstepped the line. This meddling with national affairs will cost you your life."
For a moment La Liberté confronted him from behind her barricade, her eyes darting fire.
"How dare you threaten me!" she cried shrilly.
"You have conspired against the Republic; you shall pay for it," he repeated, his fingers working convulsively as if he would like to lay hands upon her.
"My name is La Liberté," she said proudly, drawing herself up. "I am a child of the Revolution. I have drunk of her blood. Do you think, Robespierre, to terrify me with your shining toy, the guillotine? Bah! I snap my fingers at it;" and speaking thus, she advanced toward him, one hand resting on the dagger at her hip. He fell back before her, step by step, until they reached the door. Voices were heard outside and some one tried to enter.
"Break the door down, whoever you are!" cried Robespierre. "Kick the panel in; throw your whole weight against it."
"We are Hanneton and Clément, clerks; we found the rear doorway locked"—
"Break in, I say!" called out Robespierre impatiently.
The hall reverberated with the noise of an attack made by Hanneton's heavy shoes and Clément's shoulder.
La Liberté inserted the key in the lock. "I might as well open it now," she said, throwing back the door.
The two clerks stood on the threshold in open-mouthed surprise.
La Liberté passed them like a fawn and sped swiftly down the staircase.
"We were merely returning to finish up a little work," stammered Clément, who was the first to recover the use of his tongue; "but if we intrude"—
"Come in," interrupted Robespierre quickly. "I have an errand of importance for you." Seating himself at a table, he dashed off two short notes. The clerks exchanged glances from time to time.
"Here!" said Robespierre looking at Clément, and sealing the letters as he spoke. "You look the less stupid. Take this at once to the keeper of the conciergerie, then report to me in person at my house. You other fellow, take this to Commandant Henriot. You will find him either at the Hôtel de Ville or at the Jacobin Club. Tell him to report to me in person. Now go, both of you."
The two clerks did not wait to be twice bidden, and Robespierre followed them from the room.
An hour later the commandant stood before the president of the committee in his own house.
"Well," asked Robespierre, "have you executed the warrant?"
"The Citizeness Liberté has been incarcerated in the Luxembourg prison," was the reply.
Robespierre's eyes blinked rapidly. "She is a child of the Revolution," he repeated softly, "and does not fear my toy."
Upon Henriot's heels entered Clément. Robespierre turned to him eagerly.
"Fifteen minutes before I reached the conciergerie, a prisoner, named Robert Tournay, was liberated on a release signed by you, citizen president. It was delivered by a woman," was the brief report.
An oath sprang to Robespierre's lips. "Tournay!" he cried out. "So it was Tournay whom that woman has freed. The man is dangerous," he continued, speaking to himself. "He should have perished long ago had I not wished to get at Hoche through him. But he shall not escape me; nor shall the woman."
"Henriot," he exclaimed in his next breath, "order every route leading out of the city guarded. Lodge information at every section for the arrest of Robert Tournay, and of one other, a woman."
"Yes, citizen president, and who"—
"Wait, I will write her description for you," cried Robespierre. "There it is. Now be prompt, my patriot. We can still recapture our prisoner, and then"—He did not complete the sentence, but his teeth came together with a snap, and he drew his thin lips over them tightly.