"I pray you help me to my horse."
The man obliged and Roger trotted across Birdcage Walk towards St. James's Palace. As he did so it crossed his mind that perhaps, after all, Mr. Gilbert Maxwell was at home but, owing to the highly secret nature of his work, made it a rule never to reveal himself to anyone If so, a note left for him might have produced the required action in time to be effective; but that was only speculation, and Roger's need was too urgent for him to consider turning back now that he had thought of another possibility.
Outside the Palace he inquired again, of a man in a cocked hat, for the exact situation of Amesbury House, and, on learning it, pushed on up St. James's Street. Having turned left near its top end another moment brought him into the courtyard of the great mansion he was seeking.
Flinging himself off his horse he stumbled up the steps and shouted to the liveried footman on the doon "Lord Edward Fitz-Deverel! Is he at home?"
"Why, yes, Sir," replied the astonished servant. "But His Lordship is not yet risen."
"No matter! Take me to him!" panted Roger.
His dishevelled state and bandaged head now proved a talisman. The footman was sensible enough to see that this was no time to stand on ceremony. Acting with an initiative that no French servant would have dared to show, he grabbed Roger by the arm and hurried him up the broad marble staircase, then along a corridor to a heavily-carved door. Banging on it with his fists, he cried: "My Lord! There's a gentleman here who has travelled in. great haste to see you."
"Let him come in then," called a voice; and, throwing open the door, Roger staggered forward towards Droopy Ned.
Droopy did not seem to have grown any older. He still had the curiously ageless look of a young man old before his time. He was dressed in a magnificent flowing robe of Indian silk and wore a turban round his head. With his feet stretched out before him, he reclined at ease on a gilded chaise-longue while toying with a breakfast tray set on a low table at his side.
As his pale blue eyes fell on Roger, he said languidly: "Egad, Sir! You seem in a plaguey hurry. Who are you? I seem to know your face."
Collapsing in a chair, Roger grinned at him. "We last met on leaving Sherborne. You told me then to call upon you if ever I needed assistance and, by God, if ever any man needed it, I need it now."
"Why! Strap me, if it's not young Roger Brook!" Droopy grinned back. "And I'll honour the pledge willingly. If you need a poor sword or a fat purse, either are at your service."
In five minutes Roger had given the salient points in the affair that concerned him so desperately. Droopy's quick brain seemed to leap ahead of the tale at almost every stage; and, well before it was done, the languid fop had given place to the man of action. Throwing off his robe and turban he began to pull on his outdoor clothes; then he took two long strides to the door and hollaed for his servants.
One he sent to order his coach, another to collect four footmen armed with pistols to accompany him, and a third to request his father to ask an audience of Mr. Pitt for him at noon.
As they ran off to execute his orders he hastily completed his dressing, then fetched a decanter of some foreign cordial from a bureau and made Roger swallow a couple of glasses of it. The liquor revived him wonderfully and when, a few minutes later, they ran downstairs he felt that, if put to it, he could yet have ridden another stage. Within a quarter of an hour of his having reached Amesbury House, they were in the coach and off, with two armed footmen on the box and another two inside the vehicle with them.
"Whither are we going?" Roger asked, as the coach trundled across Piccadilly.
"To Portland Place," replied Droopy. " 'Tis in that fine new thoroughfare that the French Embassy is situated."
Ten minutes later they were driving up the beautiful broad street, with open country at the far end of it.
"How do you plan to take him? inquired Roger, thrusting his head out of the window. But this time he had no need to be apprehensive.
"We'll lie in wait for him in front of the house next to the Embassy," Droopy said, pulling him back by the skirt of his coat. "I'll send two of my men round to the back entrance lest, perchance, he elects to attempt getting in that way. Should he do so one of them can hold him covered with a pistol while t'other comes round to fetch us. From your description of his figure and dress 'tis impossible that they should fail to recognise him. Henry and Thomas, here, shall take the back of the house while James and John remain on the boot to render us assistance should we need it. I will give all of them their instructions; since you must not show yourself, lest he recognise you, even from a distance, and gallop off once more."
" 'Tis well planned," Roger agreed. "But he'll not recognise me, for I've never been face to face with the fellow, except in the dark."
"Of that, you cannot be certain," Droopy remarked shrewdly. "In any event, 'tis wisest that you should remain in a comer of the coach and not emerge until I give the word."
The dispositions were soon made, and they settled down to wait. Excited and overwrought as he was, Roger soon found his head nodding and, after sitting still for ten minutes, he was sound asleep.
Over an hour and a half elapsed, and when one of the footmen rapped sharply on the roof of the coach Roger did not hear him. Droopy peered out of the window and watched a thin, lanky figure come riding up the street. He waited patiently until the man had dismounted and stood in the road some ten paces away. Then he shook Roger awake, thrust a pistol into his hand and, levelling his own, sprang out of the coach.
At the sound the horseman turned, started, and made a move as though to dash for the doorway of the Embassy; but he knew that it was too far off for him to reach it. He had seen instantly that he waa covered by the two footmen on the boot of the coach as well as by Droopy, and he heard the latter shout in French:
"Stand in the King's name! One move and I shoot to kill!"
Shaking the sleep from his eyes, Roger sprang into the road beside Droopy, and found himself staring into the pale, corpse-like face of Joseph Fouché.
CHAPTER XXVI
WARRANT FOR EXTRADITION
''How positively extraordinary that I should have clean forgot all about that man," said Roger, some quarter of an hour later, as the coach rumbled south towards Downing Street. "That strange, colourless personality of his had left no impression on my mind; yet when I was searching my memory last night I should have recalled him, seeing that he is the only man in all France to whom I gave not only my father's name and my own but also the place where lay my home. 'Tis amazing, too, that he should have carried them in his memory for close on four years."
"Nay, 'tis not so amazing in view of what he said," Droopy Ned replied in his careless drawl. "It seems he prides himself on his astuteness as an amateur in detection, and a fine memory is an essential requisite for that. The name, too, of a foreign Admiral would be apt to stick in any man's mind more readily than that of one of his own countrymen. 'Tis little wonder that on seeing the notice about you on the docks at St. Malo he recalled you, and decided to gamble the price of a return fare on the packet to Southampton against the earning of so handsome a reward."
Roger nodded. "Yes, the five hundred louis offered for the letter would mean a lot to a poor school teacher, and as his pupils have not yet assembled for the autumn session, he no doubt felt that even if the venture failed 'twould prove a pleasant diversion before returning to his dreary work. I wonder though that a man so fond of intrigue does not take up something else."
"He will. Believe me, Roger, that pale, sickly-looking fellow has prodigious strength of character concealed beneath his corpse-like countenance. I'll swear to that, or I'm no judge of men. 'Tis the very colourlessness of his personality that will make him both powerful and dangerous. Did'st notice that he would not look us in the eye. That was not shame, nor fright, nor modesty. 'Twas because he was determined to hide from us the ambition that consumes him inwardly and his fury at our having thwarted him."