Robert Tournay Part 53

"The back staircase!" exclaimed Robespierre, starting toward it.

"You need not trouble to go to it. I locked that door when I came in."

Robespierre came toward her, furious with pa.s.sion. "I will have none of your escapades," he said fiercely; "give me that key or I will"--

"Keep off! keep off!" cried out La Liberte, bounding lightly out of his reach with a little mocking laugh. "Don't catch me about the waist; I carry my sting there."

"You wasp! I will crush you!" he cried out, foaming with rage.

"Better take care how you handle wasps," was her rejoinder as she perched herself upon the edge of a desk and shook her brown curls defiantly at him.

"Come, Liberte," he said, trying a coaxing tone, although his anger almost choked him; "I know you will open the door at once when I tell you that woman has obtained from me by a skillful ruse a pardon in blank. I don't know whose name will be filled in. Perhaps some great enemy of the Republic will be set at liberty, unless I can send word at once to the conciergerie and forestall it."

"I know who will be liberated," sang La Liberte, swinging her feet.

"You do!" vociferated Robespierre in genuine astonishment. "Is this a plot? Are you concerned in it?" And he came toward her, his small eyes winking rapidly.

"You don't get it yet," laughed La Liberte, sliding over to the other side of the desk. "I am concerned in enough of a plot to keep you from sending to the scaffold a man to whom I've taken a fancy. I do not very often take a particular interest in any one person, but when I do, it is lasting." And she regarded him airily from her point of vantage.

"I'll send you to the guillotine," hissed Robespierre between his teeth, striking his clenched fist upon the desk in front of him. "I'll have you arrested to-night. I'll bear with you no longer. I have permitted you to swagger around in public, to come into the Jacobin Club and flourish your pistols, because it amused the populace, and I laughed with them at your antics; but now you have overstepped the line. This meddling with national affairs will cost you your life."

For a moment La Liberte confronted him from behind her barricade, her eyes darting fire.

"How dare you threaten me!" she cried shrilly.

"You have conspired against the Republic; you shall pay for it," he repeated, his fingers working convulsively as if he would like to lay hands upon her.

"My name is La Liberte," she said proudly, drawing herself up. "I am a child of the Revolution. I have drunk of her blood. Do you think, Robespierre, to terrify me with your s.h.i.+ning toy, the guillotine? Bah! I snap my fingers at it;" and speaking thus, she advanced toward him, one hand resting on the dagger at her hip. He fell back before her, step by step, until they reached the door. Voices were heard outside and some one tried to enter.

"Break the door down, whoever you are!" cried Robespierre. "Kick the panel in; throw your whole weight against it."

"We are Hanneton and Clement, clerks; we found the rear doorway locked"--

"Break in, I say!" called out Robespierre impatiently.

The hall reverberated with the noise of an attack made by Hanneton's heavy shoes and Clement's shoulder.

La Liberte inserted the key in the lock. "I might as well open it now,"

she said, throwing back the door.

The two clerks stood on the threshold in open-mouthed surprise.

La Liberte pa.s.sed them like a fawn and sped swiftly down the staircase.

"We were merely returning to finish up a little work," stammered Clement, who was the first to recover the use of his tongue; "but if we intrude"--

"Come in," interrupted Robespierre quickly. "I have an errand of importance for you." Seating himself at a table, he dashed off two short notes. The clerks exchanged glances from time to time.

"Here!" said Robespierre looking at Clement, and sealing the letters as he spoke. "You look the less stupid. Take this at once to the keeper of the conciergerie, then report to me in person at my house. You other fellow, take this to Commandant Henriot. You will find him either at the Hotel de Ville or at the Jacobin Club. Tell him to report to me in person. Now go, both of you."

The two clerks did not wait to be twice bidden, and Robespierre followed them from the room.

An hour later the commandant stood before the president of the committee in his own house.

"Well," asked Robespierre, "have you executed the warrant?"

"The Citizeness Liberte has been incarcerated in the Luxembourg prison,"

was the reply.

Robespierre's eyes blinked rapidly. "She is a child of the Revolution,"

he repeated softly, "and does not fear my toy."

Upon Henriot's heels entered Clement. Robespierre turned to him eagerly.

"Fifteen minutes before I reached the conciergerie, a prisoner, named Robert Tournay, was liberated on a release signed by you, citizen president. It was delivered by a woman," was the brief report.

An oath sprang to Robespierre's lips. "Tournay!" he cried out. "So it was Tournay whom that woman has freed. The man is dangerous," he continued, speaking to himself. "He should have perished long ago had I not wished to get at Hoche through him. But he shall not escape me; nor shall the woman."

"Henriot," he exclaimed in his next breath, "order every route leading out of the city guarded. Lodge information at every section for the arrest of Robert Tournay, and of one other, a woman."

"Yes, citizen president, and who"--

"Wait, I will write her description for you," cried Robespierre. "There it is. Now be prompt, my patriot. We can still recapture our prisoner, and then"--He did not complete the sentence, but his teeth came together with a snap, and he drew his thin lips over them tightly.

CHAPTER XXV

NO. 7 RUE D'ARCIS

The order signed by Robespierre for the immediate release of a prisoner had not been questioned by the keeper of the conciergerie, and within a few minutes from the time when Edme presented the doc.u.ment with a heart fluctuating between the wildest hope and the greatest fear, Colonel Tournay walked out of the prison a free man.

The sudden manner of his release, the fact that it had been effected by Edme's own daring and sagacity, and that he owed his life to her whom he loved, made his brain reel. Then the recognition of the danger that still menaced him, and above all the woman who was by his side, brought him back to himself, and he was again cool, alert, and determined as she had always known him. Drawing her arm through his and walking rapidly in the shadows of Rue Barillerie, he said quickly:--

"The pursuit will be instant. Robespierre will ransack all Paris to find us. But I know a hiding-place. Come quickly."

She looked up at him. "I feel perfectly safe now," she said, and together they hurried onward.

Suddenly she stopped. "But how about Agatha!" she exclaimed, as the thought of her faithful companion came to her mind for the time.

"Agatha! Where is she?" asked Tournay almost impatiently, chafing at a moment's delay.

"At the Citizeness Privat's in the Rue Vaugirard. They will surely find and arrest her. Robert, we must not let them."

"The delay may mean the difference between life and death," replied Tournay, turning in the direction of the Rue Vaugirard; "but we must not let Agatha fall into Robespierre's clutches."