“Here’s a cursed botched piece of business from beginning to end!” said Bertram Gramont passionately, pacing the chamber backwards and forwards.
“Why, what has occurred now?” asked Vadier, anxiously. “I think I may say I am a sufferer.”
“Your own doings,” returned his accomplice, almost savagely; “you precipitated events. That cursed Jean Plessis has outwitted me; he has paid an immense sum to Barras and Fouché, and has come back from Paris with a most stringent passport. There is no disputing the purport, for it actually ensures the safety of mother and daughter to Paris, and they leave this to-morrow or the next day.”
“Diable!” muttered Vadier; “how do they go?”
“In a chasse-mare, I understand, to Rouen, or as far as they can by water.”
“And do you believe they will go to Paris?” said Vadier, looking with his remaining sinister optic into the flushed features of Bertram Gramont.
“And where else would you have them go?” returned the maire, pausing in his walk.
“Why, escape to England, after that cursed lieutenant in the English navy. They intended to go before he made his escape on board the corvette. Where’s the son, Julian?”
Bertram Gramont looked at his accomplice with a startled expression.
“By St. Nicholas! your idea is not a bad one, it’s possible. But do you know that Jean Plessis has discovered you are here, and also that it was you who stopped and attempted to rob him a month ago?”