He was all eagerness, of course.  Such a triumph for him!  The indictment of the notorious Scarlet Pimpernel on a charge of espionage would be the crowning glory of his career!  Let other men look to their laurels!  Those who brought that dangerous enemy of revolution to the guillotine would for ever be proclaimed as the saviours of France.

“A short indictment,” he said, when Chauvelin, after a lengthy discussion on various points, finally rose to take his leave, “but a scathing one!  I tell you, citizen Chauvelin, that to-morrow you will be the first to congratulate me on an unprecedented triumph.”

He had been arguing in favour of a sensational trial and no less sensational execution.  Chauvelin, with his memory harking back on many mysterious abductions at the very foot of the guillotine, would have liked to see his elusive enemy quietly put to death amongst a batch of traitors, who would help to mask his personality until after the guillotine had fallen, when the whole of Paris should ring with the triumph of this final punishment of the hated spy.

In the end, the two friends agreed upon a compromise, and parted well pleased with the turn of events which a kind Fate had ordered for their own special benefit.

X

Thus satisfied, Chauvelin returned to the Abbaye.  Hebert was safe and trustworthy, but Hebert, too, had been assailed with the same doubts which had well-nigh wrecked Chauvelin’s triumph, and with such doubts in his mind he might slacken his vigilance.

Name of a name! every man in charge of that damnable Scarlet Pimpernel should have three pairs of eyes wherewith to watch his movements.  He should have the alert brain of a Robespierre, the physical strength of a Danton, the relentlessness of a Marat.  He should be a giant in sheer brute force, a tiger in caution, an elephant in weight, and a mouse in stealthiness!

Name of a name! but ’twas only hate that could give such powers to any man!

Hebert, in the guard-room, owned to his doubts.  His comrades, too, admitted that after twenty-four hours spent on the watch, their minds were in a whirl.  The Citizen Commissary had been so sure—­so was the chief concierge of the Abbaye even now; and the men of the Surete! ... they themselves had seen the real Mole more than once ... and this man in the cell. ...  Well, would the citizen Representative have a final good look at him?

“You seem to forget Calais, citizen Hebert,” Chauvelin said sharply, “and the deadly humiliation you suffered then at the hands of this man who is now your prisoner.  Surely your eyes should have been, at least, as keen as mine own.”

Anxious, irritable, his nerves well-nigh on the rack, he nevertheless crossed the guard-room with a firm step and entered the cell where the prisoner was still lying upon the palliasse, as he had been all along, and still presenting that naked piece of shoulder through the hole in his shirt.