And instead of the uniforms, the bayonets and the scarlet caps with tricolour cockades, he was confronted by a slight, sable-clad figure, whose face, lit by the flickering light of the tallow candle, looked strangely pale and earnest.
“Citizen Chauvelin!” gasped Armand, more surprised than frightened at this unexpected apparition.
“Himself, citizen, at your service,” replied Chauvelin with his quiet, ironical manner. “I am the bearer of a letter for you from Sir Percy Blakeney. Have I your permission to enter?”
Mechanically Armand stood aside, allowing the other man to pass in. He closed the door behind his nocturnal visitor, then, taper in hand, he preceded him into the inner room.
It was the same one in which a fortnight ago a fighting lion had been brought to his knees. Now it lay wrapped in gloom, the feeble light of the candle only lighting Armand’s face and the white frill of his shirt. The young man put the taper down on the table and turned to his visitor.
“Shall I light the lamp?” he asked.
“Quite unnecessary,” replied Chauvelin curtly. “I have only a letter to deliver, and after that to ask you one brief question.”
From the pocket of his coat he drew the letter which Blakeney had written an hour ago.
“The prisoner wrote this in my presence,” he said as he handed the letter over to Armand. “Will you read it?”
Armand took it from him, and sat down close to the table; leaning forward he held the paper near the light, and began to read. He read the letter through very slowly to the end, then once again from the beginning. He was trying to do that which Chauvelin had wished to do an hour ago; he was trying to find the inner meaning which he felt must inevitably lie behind these words which Percy had written with his own hand.