Delorme took the paper and turned it round and round between his fingers. There was something queer, almost eerie about this missive, sent at this hour of the night.

"How long ago was this?" he asked.

"About half an hour, I should say. I finished my round and then came on here. Is it all right, Citizen?"

"Yes," the Commissary replied curtly. "You may go."

Only when the watchman had gone did Delorme unroll the mysterious missive. It turned out to be nothing but a hoax. There were four lines of what looked like verse, but as these were written in a foreign language which he, Delorme, did not understand, the joke, if joke there was, failed to amuse him. The only thing that interested him was a rough device at the end, by way of a signature possibly. It represented a small five-petalled flower and had been limned in red chalk.

The worthy Commissary put the note on one side, thinking that, perhaps, on the morrow he might meet a learned man who was conversant with foreign tongues. He would show the funny message to him.

After that he got into bed, snuffed out the candle, and went peacefully to sleep.

39 THE CANADIAN

Chief Commissary Lacaune had spent a restless night. His mind was not altogether at ease when he thought over the happenings of the past eventful day. The tragic farce of the pseudo Scarlet Pimpernel, and his capture by that dolt Cabel, weighed heavily on his soul. As for the wrath of Citizen Chauvelin, whenever Lacaune thought of that a cold shiver would course down the length of his spine. Somehow he had a presentiment which drove away sleep from his weary lids. A prevision of worse calamities yet to come.

And whey they came, which they did early in the morning, they proved to be more dire than he had anticipated. No sooner had he settled down to work in his office than his clerk brought in the staggering news that the two men of the Gendarmerie Nationale whom he, Lacaune, had dispatched in the course of the evening to Manderieu in response to an urgent request from his subordinate, had been discovered half an hour ago, lying bound and gagged in a field a hundred or so metres from the roadside, half-way between Choisy and Manderieu. The third man, who belonged to the village gendarmerie and had been Delorme's messenger, was found a couple of hundred metres farther on in a field the opposite side of the road. He had started from Choisy a quarter of an hour before the other two. All three men, when freed from their bonds, told the same pitiable tale. They were attacked in the dark by what they supposed were common footpads, when there were no passers-by on the road. The rogues had suddenly jumped out from behind a clump of trees and were on them before they had a chance of defending themselves. Commissary Delorme's messenger had been quickly knocked out. He was alone. The other two vowed that they had put up a good fight, but the miscreants were armed with pistols, while they only had their cutlasses, which they never had a chance of drawing. They were dragged out of their saddles by a man who was a veritable giant for strength, and knocked on the head so that they lost consciousness and remembered nothing more till they found themselves in the field, trussed like fowls and frozen stiff. Their horses were nowhere to be seen.

The three men were ushered into the presence of the Chief Commissary, but they could only reiterate their story. They supposed that robbery was the object of the attack, but none of them carried anything of value. One certainly had the written order of the Chief Commissary tucked in his belt, but that would be of no use to highway robbers; at any rate, it had disappeared, supposedly been lost in the scuffle.

At first the incident, grave as it seemed, could not be called staggering. Three valuable horses were lost, and there were two desperate footpads at large, but that was all. On the other hand Commissary Delorme over at Manderieu was doubtless fretting and fuming, waiting for the orders which had not come, and Chief Commissary Lacaune now set to at once to re-indite the order to his subordinate that the prisoner Pradel be at once sent under escort to Choisy. He had just finished writing this out when another messenger from Manderieu came riding in with the report from the Commissary of the happenings of the evening before. After a graphic account of the riots which had disturbed the peace of the little village and had only been quelled by his, Delorme's presence of mind and courage in facing the irate mob, the Commissary went onto say:

"You may imagine, Citizen, how thankful I was when your men arrived on the scene with your orders to deliver the prisoner to them. I am glad to be rid of him, as the people here would never have quietened down while they knew that Pradel was held in durance in the Commissariat. I presume you have him locked up in the Old Castle and can but hope that the citizens of Choisy will prove less choleric over the incarceration of their favourite leech than the country-folk of Manderieu."

Chief Commissary Lacaune had to read these last lines over and over again before their full significance entered his brain. When it did he was on the verge of an attack of apoplexy. What in the devil's name did it all mean, and where in h- was Pradel? The escort whom he, Lacaune, had sent to fetch him, had been put out of action before they ever got to Manderieu. Then what happened? Where did it happen? and what had become of Simon Pradel? Ah! if he ever put hands on that stormy petrel again, the guillotine would not be robbed of its prey. But in the meanwhile, what was to be done? He sent a mounted carrier in haste to Manderieu to ask for fuller details. The courier returned in less than half an hour with a further report from the Commissary, stating that the prisoner, Dr. Simon Pradel, was duly handed over to the two men of the Gendarmerie Nationale on a written order from the Chief Commissary himself. To prove his assertion, Citizen Delorme enclosed the order which one of the soldiers had handed over to him. Moreover, he respectfully would ask his chief why his own messenger had been detained in Choisy; he wanted all his men in Manderieu, as the temper of the village folk was far from reassuring.

This second report, on the face of it, only made matters worse. Chief Commissary Lacaune thought that both he and his subordinate were going mad. Who were the two men of the Gendarmerie Nationale who had come to fetch away the prisoner? How did the written order come into their hands? What had they done with Pradel once they had got him? Was he. Lacaune, awake or dreaming?

Luckily for him, his friend Louis Maurin presented himself just then. At any rate, here was a sane man with whom one could talk things over fearlessly. But the lawyer was in an unhelpful mood. He appeared entirely indifferent as to the whereabouts of Simon Pradel.

"My good friend," he said with a shrug, "your stormy petrel, as you rightly call him, is on his way to England by now, you may be sure, and a good thing too. Let him be, I say. Once he is in the land of fogs and savages, he can do no more mischief. If you start running after him you will only get yourself into more trouble . . . like you did yesterday. Let him be."

"But why should you say that he is on his way to England?"

"I am sure he is."

"But two of my men fetched him away from Manderieu."

"They were not your men at all."

"Who were they?"

"The English spies."

"You don't mean-?"

"The Scarlet Pimpernel whom that fool Cabel failed to lay by the heels, and who has tricked you, my friend, as he has tricked our police and our spies all over the country for nigh on two years. Yes! that's the man I mean, and if I were you I would make the best of what has happened and leave others to fish in those turbid waters."