Sir Percy Leads the Band

29 CHECKMATE

Devinne did not re-enter the chaise. He gave money to the two men, the driver saluted with his whip, clicked his tongue, whipped up his horses, and the vehicle went rattling down the cobbled street, leaving the young man standing by the Levets' gate. And here he remained for several minutes, until he heard the clock in the tower of the Town Hall strike midnight. This seemed to shake him out of his trance-like state. He started to walk up the street in an aimless sort of way. The whole town appeared deserted. Shutters tightly closed everywhere. Not a soul in sight. Two cats, chasing one another, raced across his path. But not a human sound to break the stillness of the night. Only caterwauling, weird sounds of prowling felines, and a bitter north- easterly wind moaning and groaning through the leafless trees of the Avenue Lafayette, and splitting of tiny dried branches, the cracking and shivering of woodwork shaken by the blast.

Devinne shivered. He was inured to cold weather as a rule; considered himself hard as nails, and he had on a thick mantle, but, somehow, he felt the cold to-night right in the marrow of his bones, right into the depth of his heart. Still walking aimlessly, he reached the Grand' Place. There on the right were the Café Tison and the Restaurant, the scene of one of Blakeney's maddest frolics. Blakeney! the leader, the comrade, the friend whom he, St. John Devinne, was about to betray! He had not betrayed him yet. He had tried to thwart his plans...and had failed, but he had done this from the sole desire to ensure the safety of the girl he loved. He had worked himself up into the belief that by dragging others into the rescue, Blakeney was jeopardizing the success of his plan. It might fail and Cécile's precious life be imperilled. No! there was no betrayal of a friend in that. Insubordination, perhaps, which Percy, in his arrogance, termed dishonour, but it was not betrayal. If his own plan had succeeded, the League and its chief, or for a matter of that, the other refugees, would not have been any worse off, save for the failure of relays at Le Perrey, perhaps, which might have held up the flight, but only for a time; and that was all. His plan, however, had failed. He had been forestalled. How? Why? By what devilish agency, he did not know. But he was no longer in doubt now. The more he thought about it all, the more convinced he was that it was Blakeney who had forestalled him as a counter-blast to his insubordination. And a coach driven at breakneck speed was even now outstripping the wind on the road to St. Gif and Le Perrey.

An insensate rage took possession of Devinne's soul, for he had remembered Pradel. Pradel in that same carriage with Cécile, under the ægis of the Scarlet Pimpernel, who had never failed in a single one of his undertakings. Pradel and Cécile! The thought was maddening. It hammered in the young man's brain like blows from a weighted stick. Pradel and Cécile! Thrown together in England under the protection of Sir Percy Blakeney, the friend of the Prince of Wales, and arbiter of style and fashion. And then marriage. Of course, the marriage would follow. In England fellows like this Pradel, doctors, lawyers, and so on, were often held in high esteem, and if His Royal Highness approved, the marriage would come about as a matter of course.

Devinne felt that he was going mad. He still wandered aimlessly up one street and down another, like a Judas meditating treachery. He turned into the Rue Haute, and there was the Town Hall. The tower clock had just struck one. For an hour he had been roaming the streets like this. He was cold and very tired. He came to a halt now opposite the municipal building, and leaning against a wall, he stared up at the imposing façade. The place was closed for the night. It would not open probably before eight o'clock. Seven hours to kill while that hammering in his brain went on, driving him to insanity.

He didn't know where Pradel lived or he would have gone there, rung the bell, asked to see the doctor. If he was in, he would kill him. That would be the best way out of this trouble. Kill him and get away. Nobody would know. But if Pradel was gone, that would mean that he was on his way to England with Cécile and the others, under the protection of the League, and he, Devinne, would have no longer any compunction in doing what he had already made up his mind to do. No compunction now, and no remorse in the future.