The Greatest Historical Novels. Rafael Sabatini
do you mean?'
'Messieurs the émigrés. Three of their assassins—at least three—are at this moment lying in wait for you in the street.'
Le Chapelier lost colour. 'But how do they know? Have you...?'
'No. I haven't. If I had, I should not now be here. Your visit has placed the Elector in a delicate position. Clemens Wenceslaus has a nice sense of hospitality. He found himself between the wall of that and the sword of your demand. In his perplexity he sent for Monsieur d'Entragues and told him of it in confidence. In confidence, Monsieur d'Entragues passed on the information to the Princes. In confidence the Princes appear to have told the whole court, and in confidence a member of it told me an hour ago. Has it ever occurred to you, Isaac, that but for confidential communications one would never get at any of the facts of history?'
'And you have come to warn me?'
'Isn't that what you gather?'
'This is very friendly, André.' Le Chapelier was gravely emphatic. 'But why should you suppose that they intend to murder me?'
'Isn't it what you would suppose, yourself?'
Le Chapelier sat down in the only armchair that plainly furnished room afforded. He drew a handkerchief from his pocket and mopped the sweat which had gathered in cold beads upon his brow.
'You are taking some risk,' he said. 'It is noble, but, in the circumstances, foolish.'
'Most noble things are foolish.'
'If they are posted there as you say ...' Le Chapelier shrugged. 'Your warning comes too late. But I thank you for it none the less, my friend.'
'Nonsense. Is there no back way out of this?'
A wan smile crossed the face of the deputy, which showed pale in the candle-light.
'If there were, they would be guarding it.'
'Very well, then. I'll seek the Elector. He shall send his guards to clear a way for you.'
'The Elector has gone to Oberkirch. Before you could reach him and return, it would be daylight. Do you imagine that those murderers will wait all night? When they perceive that I am not coming forth again, they'll knock. The woman will open, and ...' He shrugged, and left the sentence there. Then in hot, distressed anger he broke out: 'It's an infamy! I am an ambassador, and my person is sacred. But these vindictive devils care nothing for that. In their eyes I am vermin to be exterminated, and they'll exterminate me without a thought for the vengeance they will bring down upon their host the Elector.' He got to his feet again, raging. 'My God! What a vengeance that will be! This foolish archbishop shall realize the rashness of having harboured such guests.'
'That won't slake the thirst you'll have in hell,' said André-Louis. 'And, anyway, you're not dead yet.'
'Why, no. Merely under sentence.'
'Come, man. To be warned is already something. It's the unsuspecting who walks foolishly into the trap. If, now, we were to make a sally, both together, the odds are none so heavy. Two against three. We might bring you off.'
Hope dawned in Le Chapelier's face. Doubt followed. 'Do you know that there are but three? Can you be sure?'
André-Louis sighed. 'Ah! That, I confess, is my own misgiving.'
'Depend upon it, there will be more at hand. Go your ways, my friend, while you may still depart. I'll await them here with my pistols. They will not know that I am warned. I may get one of them before they get me.'
'A poor consolation.' André-Louis stood in thought. Then: 'Yes, I might go my way,' he said. 'They've seen me enter. They will hardly hinder my departure, lest by so doing they should alarm you.' His eyes grew bright with inspiration. Abruptly he asked a question. 'If you were out of this house, what should you do?'
'Do? I should make for the frontier. My travelling chaise is at the Red Hat.' Despondently he added: 'But what's that to the matter?'
'Are your papers in order? Could you pass the guard at the bridge?'
'Oh, yes. My passport is countersigned by the Electoral Chancellor.'
'Why, then, it's easy, I think.'
'Easy?'
'We're much of a height and shape. You will take this riding-coat, these white breeches and these boots. With my hat on your head and my whip tucked under your arm, the woman of the house will light Monsieur André-Louis Moreau to the door. On the doorstep you will pause turning your back upon that gateway across the street; so that whilst your figure is clear in the light, your face will not be seen. You will say to the woman something like this: "You had better tell the gentleman upstairs that if I do not return within an hour, he need not wait for me." Then you plunge abruptly from the light into the gloom and make off, a hand in each pocket, a pistol in each hand for emergencies.'
The colour was stirring again in the deputy's pale cheeks. 'But you?'
'I?' André-Louis shrugged. 'They will let you go because they will suppose that you are not Isaac Le Chapelier. They will let me go because they will see that I am not Isaac Le Chapelier.'
The deputy wrung his hands nervously. He was white again. 'You tempt me damnably.'
André-Louis began to unbutton his coat. 'Off with your clothes.'
'But the risk to you is more than you represent it.'
'It is negligible, and merely a risk. Your death, if you wait, is a certainty. Come, man. To work!'
The change was effected, and at least the back view presented by Le Chapelier in André-Louis's clothes must in an uncertain light be indistinguishable from that of the man whom those watching eyes had seen enter the house a half-hour ago.
'Now call your woman. Dab your lips with a handkerchief as you emerge. It will help to mask your face until you've turned.'
Le Chapelier gripped both his hands. His myopic eyes were moist. 'I have no words, my friend.'
'Praised be Heaven! Away with you. You have an hour in which to be out of Coblentz.'
A few minutes later, when the door opened, something stirred in the archway across the street. The watching eyes beheld the man in the riding-coat and sugar-loaf hat who had entered a half-hour before. They heard his parting message, loudly spoken, and saw him go striding down the street. They made no move to hinder or to follow.
André-Louis above, peering past the edge of the blind, his ears attentive, was content.
A full hour he waited, and whilst waiting he considered. What if these gentlemen issued no challenge, made no covert attack, but, persuaded that he was Le Chapelier, shot him as he walked down the street? It was a risk he had not counted. Counting it now, he decided that it would be better to receive them here in the light, where, face to face, they would perceive their error.
Another hour he waited, now sitting, now pacing the length of the narrow chamber, in a state of nervousness induced by the suspense, conjecture chasing conjecture through his mind. Then, at long last, towards ten o'clock, a rattle of approaching steps on the kidney stones of the street below, a mutter of voices directly under the window, announced that the enemy was moving to the assault.
Considering what the odds would be, André-Louis wished that he had pistols. But Le Chapelier had taken the only pair. He fingered the cut-steel hilt of the light delicate sword which Le Chapelier had left him, but he did not draw it. A loud knock fell on the door, and was twice repeated.
He heard the shuffling steps of the woman, the click of the lifted latch, her voice raised in challenge, deeper voices answering her, then her voice again, in an outcry of alarm, and at last a rush of heavy feet along the passage and upon the stairs.
When the door was flung rudely open, the three men who thrust into the room beheld an apparently calm young gentleman standing beyond the barrier of the table, with brows interrogatively raised, considering them with a glance no more startled than the intrusion warranted.
'What's