"Agencies?" broke in the boy gruffly. "What agencies?"
"Oh!" said Chauvelin vaguely, "we all know that aristos have powerful friends these days. It will not be over safe to take the girl across after dark from one house to another ... the alley is badly lighted: the wench will not go willingly. She might scream and create a disturbance and draw ... er ... those same unknown agencies to her rescue. I think a body of Marats should be told off to convey her to the Rat Mort...."
Young Lalouët shrugged his shoulders.
"That's your affair," he said curtly. "Eh, Carrier?" And he glanced over his shoulder at the proconsul, who at once assented.
Martin-Roget—struck by his colleague's argument—would have interposed, but Carrier broke in with one of his uncontrolled outbursts of fury.
"Ah ça," he exclaimed, "enough of this now. Citizen Lalouët is right and I have done enough for you already. If you want the Kernogan wench to be at the Rat Mort, you must see to getting her there yourself. She is next door, what? I won't have anything to do with it and I won't have my Marats implicated in the affair either. Name of a dog! have I not told you that I am beset with spies? It would of a truth be a climax if I was denounced as having dragged aristos to a house of ill-fame and then had them arrested there as malefactors! Now out with you! I have had enough of this! If your rabble is at the Rat Mort to-night, they shall be arrested with all the other cut-throats. That is my last word. The rest is your affair. Lalouët! the door!"
And without another word, and without listening to further protests from Martin-Roget or Chauvelin, Jacques Lalouët closed the doors of the audience chamber in their face.
VII
Outside on the landing, Martin-Roget swore a violent, all comprehensive oath.
"To think that we are under the heel of that skunk!" he said.