In the out-at-elbows, half-starved servant of the murdered Terrorist,
citizen Chauvelin, of the Committee of Public Safety, had recognised his
arch enemy, that meddlesome and adventurous Englishman who chose to hide
his identity under the pseudonym of the Scarlet Pimpernel. He knew that
he could reckon on Hebert; his orders not to allow the prisoner one
moment out of sight would of a certainty be strictly obeyed.

Hebert, indeed, a few moments later, greeted his chief outside the doors
of the depot with the welcome news that Paul Mole was safely under lock
and key.

"You had no trouble with him?" Chauvelin queried, with ill-concealed
eagerness.

"No, no! citizen, no trouble," was Hebert's quick reply. "He seems to be
a well-known rogue in these parts," he continued with a complacent
guffaw; "and some of his friends tried to hustle us at the corner of the
Rue de Tourraine; no doubt with a view to getting the prisoner away. But
we were too strong for them, and Paul Mole is now sulking in his cell
and still protesting that his arrest is an outrage against the liberty
of the people."

Chauvelin made no further remark. He was obviously too excited to speak.
Pushing past Hebert and the men of the Surete who stood about the dark
and narrow passages of the depot, he sought the Commissary of the
Section in the latter's office.

It was now close upon ten o'clock. The citizen Commissary Cuisinier had
finished his work for the day and was preparing to go home and to bed.
He was a family man, had been a respectable bourgeois in his day, and