Roger Brook (04): Man who Killed the King, The by Wheatley Dennis

Author:Wheatley, Dennis [Wheatley, Dennis]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Espionage, Fiction, Historical, Novel
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 1951-01-15T03:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER XVIII

A GRIM BUSINESS

Roger was standing a little above Hutot, and near enough to have kicked aside one of his pistols—but not both. For a moment they glared at each other in silence, then Hutot’s bloated face broke into a smile and he sneered:

“So I’ve caught you, Citizen Representative, and your aristo bitch as well. I felt sure we’d met before when I saw you in court, but I couldn’t place you. The moment you entered the Légers’ sitting-room I knew you, though. Seeing you in that old screw’s house where we devilled together rang the bell. Then your bitch gave you away entirely. I remember hearing how you’d become secretary to her father and gone to live here. I’ll bet you seduced her then. Anyhow, it was a thousand francs to a rotten apple that the two of you would make for Bécherel, counting on finding a hide-out for her among the reactionary peasants. So many of them are still fools enough to think that they owe something to the gilded lice that battened on them in the past. But you shouldn’t have left your horses in the stable. Finding them told us you couldn’t be far off.”

He paused for a second, then went on with relish, “I wonder what the Committee of Public Safety would have to say to you if they learnt that you had made off with a ci-devant Vicomtesse condemned to death for harbouring a rebel leader. There’s nothing against a patriot making such bitches provide him with a bit of fun, but saving their dirty necks is a very different matter. It is the act of a traitor to the Revolution, and punishable by death. I don’t think we’ll have to bother to send you to Paris, though, because the case against you is such a clear one. You have used your official position in an endeavour to save a condemned aristocrat to whose family you are known to have been indebted. My men and I can form a tribunal competent to deal with that. Drop that fowling-piece and put your hands up! If you resist I’ll put a brace of bullets through your guts!”

Roger needed no telling that he was face to face with an enemy who would show him no mercy, and that his life hung by a thread; but Hutot’s wordy savouring of his triumph had at least given him a few seconds in which to think. Nearly a hundred feet away, at the far end of the broad passage, two shadowy figures were moving with a lighted candle. At about half that distance a streak of light showed that the door of Athénaïs’s room was ajar, and sounds of movement came from it. His brain racing wildly, he strove to reconstruct the dire misfortune that had occurred during his absence. It looked as if Hutot had surprised Athénaïs in her room and that some of his men still held her there. She must have been listening intently for his footsteps,

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