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Updated: June 6, 2025
Chauvelin threw open the door, and before his secretary could say a word, he had managed to stammer between two sneezes "The tall stranger quick! did any of you see him?" "Where, citoyen?" asked Desgas, in surprise. "Here, man! through that door! not five minutes ago." "We saw nothing, citoyen! The moon is not yet up, and . . ."
Escape for him and them would be impossible. All the roads patrolled and watched, the trap well set, the net, wide at present, but drawing together tighter and tighter, until it closed upon the daring plotter, whose superhuman cunning even could not rescue him from its meshes now. Desgas was about to go, but Chauvelin once more called him back.
Whilst he gave these curt and concise orders, he had completed his change of attire. The priest's costume had been laid aside, and he was once more dressed in his usual dark, tight-fitting clothes. At last he took up his hat. "I shall have an interesting prisoner to deliver into your hands," he said with a chuckle, as with unwonted familiarity he took Desgas' arm, and led him towards the door.
He dragged another chair to the fire, and Chauvelin, whose impatience was by now quite beyond control, sat down beside the hearth, in such a way as to command a view of the door. Desgas had been gone nearly a quarter of an hour.
Still, she was determined to keep a close watch over his enemy, and a vague hope filled her heart, that whilst she kept Chauvelin in sight, Percy's fate might still be hanging in the balance. Desgas left Chauvelin moodily pacing up and down the room, whilst he himself waited outside for the return of the man whom he had sent in search of Reuben. Thus several minutes went by.
Chauvelin, who was trying to conceal his impatience beneath his usual urbane manner, took a quick look at his watch. Desgas should not be long: another two or three minutes, and this impudent Englishman would be secure in the keeping of half a dozen of Captain Jutley's most trusted men. "You are on your way to Paris, Sir Percy?" he asked carelessly.
She stumbled on behind the hedge in the low, thick grass of the ditch. She must have run on very fast, and had outdistanced Chauvelin and Desgas, for presently she reached the edge of the cliff, and heard their footsteps distinctly behind her.
"And you are just five minutes too late, my friend," said Chauvelin, with concentrated fury. "Citoyen . . . I . . ." "You did what I ordered you to do," said Chauvelin, with impatience. "I know that, but you were a precious long time about it. Fortunately, there's not much harm done, or it had fared ill with you, Citoyen Desgas." Desgas turned a little pale.
He did not wait to see his orders carried out: he knew that he could trust these soldiers who were still smarting under his rebuke not to mince matters, when given a free hand to belabour a third party. "When that lumbering coward has had his punishment," he said to Desgas, "the men can guide us as far as the cart, and one of them can drive us in it back to Calais.
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