"No. I do not."
"Yet I translated quite clearly."
"It is not the language that puzzles me. The contents seem to me such drivel. The man wants secrecy, what? He is supposed to be astute, resourceful, above all mysterious and enigmatic. Yet he writes to his friend—matter of no importance between them, recollections of the past, known to them both—and threats for the future, equally futile and senseless. I cannot reconcile it all. It puzzles me."
"And it would puzzle me," rejoined Chauvelin, while the ghost of a smile curled his thin lips, "did I not know the man. Futile? Senseless, you say? Well, he does futile and senseless things one moment and amazing deeds of personal bravery and of astuteness the next. He is three parts a braggart too. He wanted you, me—all of us to know how he and his followers succeeded in eluding our vigilance and entered our closely-guarded city in the guise of grimy peat-gatherers. Now I come to think of it, it was easy enough for them to do that. Those peat-gatherers who live inside the city boundaries return from their work as the night falls in. Those cursed English adventurers are passing clever at disguise—they are born mountebanks the lot of them. Money and impudence they have in plenty. They could easily borrow or purchase some filthy rags from the cottages on the dunes, then mix with the crowd on its return to the city. I dare say it was cleverly done. That Scarlet Pimpernel is just a clever adventurer and nothing more. So far his marvellous good luck has carried him through. Now we shall see."
Carrier had listened in silence. Something of his colleague's calm had by this time communicated itself to him too. He was no longer raving like an infuriated bull—his terror no longer made a half-cringing, wholly savage brute of him. He was sprawling across the desk—his arms folded, his deep-set eyes studying closely the well-nigh inscrutable face of Chauvelin. Young Lalouët too had lost something of his impudence. That mysterious spell which seemed to emanate from the elusive personality of the bold English adventurer had been cast over these two callous, bestial natures, humbling their arrogance and making them feel that here was no ordinary situation to be dealt with by smashing, senseless hitting and the spilling of innocent blood. Both felt instinctively too that this man Chauvelin, however wholly he may have failed in the past, was nevertheless still the only man who might grapple successfully with the elusive and adventurous foe.
"Are you assuming, citizen Chauvelin," queried Carrier after awhile, "that this packet of papers was dropped purposely by the Englishman, so that it might get into our hands?"
"There is always such a possibility," replied Chauvelin drily. "With that type of man one must be prepared to meet the unexpected."
"Then go on, citizen Chauvelin. What else is there among those satané papers?"
"Nothing further of importance. There is a map of Nantes, and one of the coast and of Le Croisic. There is a cutting from Le Moniteur dated last September, and one from the London Gazette dated three years ago. The Moniteur makes reference to the production of Athalie at the Théâtre Molière, and the London Gazette to the sale of fat cattle at an Agricultural Show. There is a receipted account from a London tailor for two hundred pounds' worth of clothes supplied, and one from a Lyons mercer for an hundred francs worth of silk cravats. Then there is the one letter which alone amidst all this rubbish appears to be of any consequence...."
He took up the last paper; his hand was still quite steady.