“Any more work for me to-night?” asked Magloire, with a yawn.
“Only an arrest,” replied Lomaque. “Collect our men; and when you’re ready get a coach at the door.”
“We were just going to supper,” grumbled Magloire to himself, as he went out. “The devil seize the Aristocrats! They’re all in such a hurry to get to the guillotine that they won’t even give a man time to eat his victuals in peace!”
“There’s no choice now,” muttered Lomaque, angrily thrusting the arrest-order and the three-cornered note into his pocket. “His father was the saving of me; he himself welcomed me like an equal; his sister treated me like a gentleman, as the phrase went in those days; and now—”
He stopped and wiped his forehead—then unlocked his desk, produced a bottle of brandy, and poured himself out a glass of the liquor, which he drank by sips, slowly.
“I wonder whether other men get softer-hearted as they grow older!” he said. “I seem to do so, at any rate. Courage! courage! what must be, must. If I risked my head to do it, I couldn’t stop this arrest. Not a man in the office but would be ready to execute it, if I wasn’t.”
Here the rumble of carriage-wheels sounded outside.
“There’s the coach!” exclaimed Lomaque, locking up the brandy-bottle, and taking his hat. “After all, as this arrest is to be made, it’s as well for them that I should make it.”
Consoling himself as he best could with this reflection, Chief Police Agent Lomaque blew out the candles, and quitted the room.