"You, Percy!" exclaimed Tony in amazement.
"Yes, I," laughed the other lightly. "Why not? I had had my suspicions of him for some time. As luck would have it he started off on the Monday afternoon by hired coach to Chelwood. I followed. From Chelwood he wanted to go on to Redhill: but the roads were axle deep in mud, and evening was gathering in very fast. Nobody would take him. He wanted a horse and a guide. I was on the spot—as disreputable a bar-loafer as you ever saw in your life. I offered to take him. He had no choice. He had to take me. No one else had offered. I took him to the Bottom Inn. There he met our esteemed friend M. Chauvelin...."
"Chauvelin!" cried Tony, suddenly roused from the dull apathy of his immeasurable grief, at sound of that name which recalled so many exciting adventures, such mad, wild, hair-breadth escapes. "Chauvelin! What in the world is he doing here in England?"
"Brewing mischief, of course," replied Blakeney dryly. "In disgrace, discredited, a marked man—what you will—my friend M. Chauvelin has still an infinite capacity for mischief. Through the interstices of a badly fastened shutter I heard two blackguards devising infinite devilry. That is why, Tony," he added, "I urged an immediate marriage as the only real protection for Yvonne de Kernogan against those blackguards."
"Would to God you had been more explicit!" exclaimed Tony with a bitter sigh.
"Would to God I had," rejoined the other, "but there was so little time, with licences and what not all to arrange for, and less than an hour to do it in. And would you have suspected the Duc himself of such execrable duplicity even if you had known, as I did then, that the so-called Martin-Roget hath name Adet, and that he matures thoughts of deadly revenge against the duc de Kernogan and his daughter?"
"Martin-Roget? the banker—the exiled royalist who...."
"He may be a banker now ... but he certainly is no royalist—he is the son of a peasant who was unjustly put to death four years ago by the duc de Kernogan."
"Ye gods!"
"He came over to England plentifully supplied with money—I could not gather if the money is his or if it has been entrusted to him by the revolutionary government for purposes of spying and corruption—but he came to England in order to ingratiate himself with the duc de Kernogan and his daughter, and then to lure them back to France, for what purpose you may well imagine."