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That wretched consumptive, Rateau, was with them, and made a facetious remark as Kennard, pale and haggard, almost ghostlike, with a white bandage round his head, appeared upon the landing. "Go back to bed, citizen," the odious creature said, with a raucous laugh. "We are taking care of your sweetheart for you."
But," he added lightly, "I like her all the better for that eh, Rateau? Give me a wench with a temperament, I say!" But Esther, too, had recovered herself. She realised her helplessness, and gathered courage from the consciousness of it! Now she faced the infamous villain more calmly. "I will never marry you," she said loudly and firmly. "Never! I am not afraid to die.
After that the pursuit became closer and hotter. Rateau was in and out of that tight network of streets which cluster around the Place de Fourci, intent, apparently, on throwing his pursuers off the scent, for after a while he was running round and round in a circle. Now up the Rue des Poules, then to the right and to the right again; back in the Place de Fourci.
But, quick as he was, that odious, wheezing creature was quicker still, and now, when Kennard had turned on his back, Rateau promptly sat on his chest, a dead weight, with long legs stretched out before him, coughing and spluttering, yet wholly at his ease.
Only a few more pages and the book is done. Oh, Lord! Here comes Rateau to knock my house to pieces." Sure enough, the concierge entered, made an excuse for being late, took off his vest, and cast a look of defiance at the furniture. Then he hurled himself at the bed, grappled with the mattress, got a half-Nelson on it, and balancing himself, turning half around, hurled it onto the springs.
If the Sucy diamonds are not found, you alone will be held responsible for their loss to the Government of the People." Chauvelin's voice had now assumed a threatening tone, and Gourdon felt all his audacity and self-assurance fall away from him, leaving him a prey to nameless terror. "We must round up Rateau," he murmured hastily. "He cannot have gone far."
You'll make the aristo think that we are afraid." "Well?" queried Rateau blandly. "Aren't you?" "No!" replied Merri fiercely. "I'll go now because ... because ... well! because I have had enough to-day. And the wench sickens me. I wish to serve the Republic by marrying her, but just now I feel as if I should never really want her. So I'll go!
The lot fell to Merri; but the whole gang was to have a share in the putative fortune even Rateau, the wretched creature with the hacking cough, who looked as if he had one foot in the grave, and shivered as if he were stricken with ague, put in a word now and again to remind his good friend Merri that he, too, was looking forward to his share of the spoils.
"You are not coming with us, Blakeney?" queried Sir Andrew Ffoulkes, and it seemed to Esther's sensitive ears as if a tone of real anxiety and also of entreaty rang in the young man's voice. "No, not this time," replied Sir Percy lightly. "I like my character of Rateau, and I don't want to give it up just yet.
M. Rateau is a sensible man, who has observed much and speaks little; so that he has always something to say. While looking over the accounts I had prepared for him, his look fell upon my journal, and I was obliged to acknowledge that in this way I wrote a diary of my actions and thoughts every evening for private use.
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