V

Six days had gone by since Chauvelin had delivered his cruel “either—­ or” to poor little Lucile Clamette; three since he had found Henri de Montorgueil’s reply to the girl’s appeal in the hollow of the tree.  Since then he had made a careful investigation of the chateau, and soon was able to settle it in his own mind as to which room had been Madame la Marquise’s boudoir in the past.  It was a small apartment, having direct access on the first landing of the staircase, and the one window gave on the rose garden at the back of the house.  Inside the monumental hearth, at an arm’s length up the wide chimney, a receptacle had been contrived in the brickwork, with a small iron door which opened and closed with a secret spring.  Chauvelin, whom his nefarious calling had rendered proficient in such matters, had soon mastered the workings of that spring.  He could now open and close the iron door at will.

Up to a late hour on the sixth night of this weary waiting, the receptacle inside the chimney was still empty.  That night Chauvelin had determined to spend at the chateau.  He could not have rested elsewhere.

Even his colleague Lebel could not know what the possession of those papers would mean to the discredited agent of the Committee of Public Safety.  With them in his hands, he could demand rehabilitation, and could purchase immunity from those sneers which had been so galling to his arrogant soul—­sneers which had become more and more marked, more and more unendurable, and more and more menacing, as he piled up failure on failure with every encounter with the Scarlet Pimpernel.

Immunity and rehabilitation!  This would mean that he could once more measure his wits and his power with that audacious enemy who had brought about his downfall.

“In the name of Satan, bring us those papers!” Robespierre himself had cried with unwonted passion, ere he sent him out on this important mission.  “We none of us could stand the scandal of such disclosures.  It would mean absolute ruin for us all.”

And Chauvelin that night, as soon as the shades of evening had drawn in, took up his stand in the chateau, in the small inner room which was contiguous to the boudoir.

Here he sat, beside the open window, for hour upon hour, his every sense on the alert, listening for the first footfall upon the gravel path below.  Though the hours went by leaden-footed, he was neither excited nor anxious.  The Clamette family was such a precious hostage that the Montorgueils were bound to comply with Lucile’s demand for the papers by every dictate of honour and of humanity.

“While we have those people in our power,” Chauvelin had reiterated to himself more than once during the course of his long vigil, “even that meddlesome Scarlet Pimpernel can do nothing to save those cursed Montorgueils.”

The night was dark and still.  Not a breath of air stirred the branches of the trees or the shrubberies in the park; any footsteps, however wary, must echo through that perfect and absolute silence.  Chauvelin’s keen, pale eyes tried to pierce the gloom in the direction whence in all probability the aristo would come.  Vaguely he wondered if it would be Henri de Montorgueil or the old Marquis himself who would bring the papers.