El Dorado Baroness Orczy (dark academia books to read .txt) 📖

slouchy gait peculiar to the out-at-elbows working man of the day, hugging the houses as he walked along the streets, Blakeney made slow progress across the city. But at last he reached the façade of St. Germain l’Auxerrois, and turning sharply to his right he soon came in sight of the house which he had only quitted twenty-four hours ago.

We all know that house⁠—all of us who are familiar with the Paris of those terrible days. It stands quite detached⁠—a vast quadrangle, facing the Quai de l’École and the river, backing on the Rue St. Germain l’Auxerrois, and shouldering the Carrefour des Trois Maries. The porte-cochère, so-called, is but a narrow doorway, and is actually situated in the Rue St. Germain l’Auxerrois.

Blakeney made his way cautiously right round the house; he peered up and down the quay, and his keen eyes tried to pierce the dense gloom that hung at the corners of the Pont Neuf immediately opposite. Soon he assured himself that for the present, at any rate, the house was not being watched.

Armand presumably had not yet left a message for him here; but he might do so at any time now that he knew that his chief was in Paris and on the lookout for him.

Blakeney made up his mind to keep this house in sight. This art of watching he had acquired to a masterly extent, and could have taught Héron’s watchdogs a remarkable lesson in it. At night, of course, it was a comparatively easy task. There were a good many unlighted doorways along the quay, whilst a street lamp was fixed on a bracket in the wall of the very house which he kept in observation.

Finding temporary shelter under various doorways, or against the dank walls of the houses, Blakeney set himself resolutely to a few hours’ weary waiting. A thin, drizzly rain fell with unpleasant persistence, like a damp mist, and the thin blouse which he wore soon became wet through and clung hard and chilly to his shoulders.

It was close on midnight when at last he thought it best to give up his watch and to go back to his lodgings for a few hours’ sleep; but at seven o’clock the next morning he was back again at his post.

The porte-cochère of his former lodging-house was not yet open; he took up his stand close beside it. His woollen cap pulled well over his forehead, the grime cleverly plastered on his hair and face, his lower jaw thrust forward, his eyes looking lifeless and bleary, all gave him an expression of sly villainy, whilst the short clay pipe struck at a sharp angle in his mouth, his hands thrust into the pockets of his ragged breeches, and his bare feet in the mud of the road, gave the final touch to his representation of an out-of-work, ill-conditioned, and supremely discontented loafer.

He had not very long to wait. Soon the porte-cochère of the house was opened, and the concierge came out with his broom, making a show of cleaning the pavement in front of the door. Five minutes later a lad, whose clothes consisted entirely of rags, and whose feet and head were bare, came rapidly up the street from the quay, and walked along looking at the houses as he went, as if trying to decipher their number. The cold grey dawn was just breaking, dreary and damp, as all the past days had been. Blakeney watched the lad as he approached, the small, naked feet falling noiselessly on the cobblestones of the road. When the boy was quite close to him and to the house, Blakeney shifted his position and took the pipe out of his mouth.

“Up early, my son!” he said gruffly.

“Yes,” said the pale-faced little creature; “I have a message to deliver at No. 9 Rue St. Germain l’Auxerrois. It must be somewhere near here.”

“It is. You can give me the message.”

“Oh, no, citizen!” said the lad, into whose pale, circled eyes a look of terror had quickly appeared. “It is for one of the lodgers in No. 9. I must give it to him.”

With an instinct which he somehow felt could not err at this moment, Blakeney knew that the message was one from Armand to himself; a written message, too, since⁠—instinctively when he spoke⁠—the boy clutched at his thin shirt, as if trying to guard something precious that had been entrusted to him.

“I will deliver the message myself, sonny,” said Blakeney gruffly. “I know the citizen for whom it is intended. He would not like the concierge to see it.”

“Oh! I would not give it to the concierge,” said the boy. “I would take it upstairs myself.”

“My son,” retorted Blakeney, “let me tell you this. You are going to give that message up to me and I will put five whole livres into your hand.”

Blakeney, with all his sympathy aroused for this poor pale-faced lad, put on the airs of a ruffianly bully. He did not wish that message to be taken indoors by the lad, for the concierge might get hold of it, despite the boy’s protests and tears, and after that Blakeney would perforce have to disclose himself before it would be given up to him. During the past week the concierge had been very amenable to bribery. Whatever suspicions he had had about his lodger he had kept to himself for the sake of the money which he received; but it was impossible to gauge any man’s trend of thought these days from one hour to the next. Something⁠—for aught Blakeney knew⁠—might have occurred in the past twenty-four hours to change an amiable and accommodating lodging-house keeper into a surly or dangerous spy.

Fortunately, the concierge had once more gone within; there was no one abroad, and if there were, no one probably would take any notice of a burly ruffian browbeating a child.

“Allons!” he said gruffly, “give me the letter, or that five livres goes back into my pocket.”

“Five livres!” exclaimed the child with pathetic eagerness. “Oh, citizen!”

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