The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel | Page 8

he added, with a hoarse laugh, "Jean Paul in his bath was as
naked as on the day he was born!"
"'Tis true," said one of those who had been most active in rummaging
through Mole's grimy rags. "There's nothing to be found on him."

But suspicion once aroused was not easily allayed. Mole's protestations
became more and more vigorous and emphatic. His papers were all in
order, he vowed. He had them on him: his own identity papers, clear
for anyone to see. Someone had dragged them out of his pocket; they
were dank and covered with splashes of mud--hardly legible. They
were handed over to a man who stood in the immediate circle of light
projected by the lamp. He seized them and examined them carefully.
This man was short and slight, was dressed in well-made cloth clothes;
his hair was held in at the nape of the next in a modish manner with a
black taffeta bow. His hands were clean, slender, and claw-like, and he
wore the tricolour scarf of office round his waist which proclaimed him
to be a member of one of the numerous Committees which tyrannised
over the people.
The papers appeared to be in order, and proclaimed the bearer to be
Paul Mole, a native of Besancon, a carpenter by trade. The identity
book had recently been signed by Jean Paul Marat, the man's latest
employer, and been counter-signed by the Commissary of the section.
The man in the tricolour scarf turned with some acerbity on the crowd
who was still pressing round the prisoner.
"Which of you here," he queried roughly, "levelled an unjust accusation
against an honest citizen?"
But, as usual in such cases, no one replied directly to the charge. It was
not safe these days to come into conflict with men like Mole. The
Committees were all on their side, against the bourgeois as well as
against the aristos. This was the reign of the proletariat, and the
sans-culotte always emerged triumphant in a conflict against the well-
to-do. Nor was it good to rouse the ire of citizen Chauvelin, one of the
most powerful, as he was the most pitiless, members of the Committee
of Public Safety. Quiet, sarcastic rather than aggressive, something of
the aristo, too, in his clean linen and well-cut clothes, he had not even
yielded to the defunct Marat in cruelty and relentless persecution of
aristocrats.
Evidently his sympathies now were all with Mole, the out-at-elbows,

miserable servant of an equally miserable master. His pale-coloured,
deep-set eyes challenged the crowd, which gave way before him, slunk
back into the corners, away from his coldly threatening glance. Thus he
found himself suddenly face to face with Mole, somewhat isolated
from the rest, and close to the tin bath with its grim contents. Chauvelin
had the papers in his hand.
"Take these, citizen," he said curtly to the other. "They are all in order."
He looked up at Mole as he said this, for the latter, though his shoulders
were bent, was unusually tall, and Mole took the papers from him.
Thus for the space of a few seconds the two men looked into one
another's face, eyes to eyes--and suddenly Chauvelin felt an icy sweat
coursing down his spine. The eyes into which he gazed had a strange,
ironical twinkle in them, a kind of good-humoured arrogance, whilst
through the firm, clear-cut lips, half hidden by a dirty and ill-kempt
beard, there came the sound--oh! a mere echo--of a quaint and inane
laugh.
The whole thing--it seemed like a vision--was over in a second.
Chauvelin, sick and faint with the sudden rush of blood to his head,
closed his eyes for one brief instant. The next, the crowd had closed
round him; anxious inquiries reached his re-awakened senses.
But he uttered one quick, hoarse cry:
"Hebert! A moi! Are you there?"
"Present, citizen!" came in immediate response. And a tall figure in the
tattered uniform affected by the revolutionary guard stepped briskly out
of the crowd. Chauvelin's claw-like hand was shaking visibly.
"The man Mole," he called in a voice husky with excitement. "Seize
him at once! And, name of a dog! do not allow a living soul in or out of
the house!"
Hebert turned on his heel. The next moment his harsh voice was heard
above the din and the general hubbub around:

"Quite safe, citizen!" he called to his chief. "We have the rogue right
enough!"
There was much shouting and much cursing, a great deal of bustle and
confusion, as the men of the Surete closed the doors of the defunct
demagogue's lodgings. Some two score men, a dozen or so women,
were locked in, inside the few rooms which reeked of dirt and of
disease. They jostled and pushed, screamed and protested.