irection of the further room wherein she sat, so silent and so still,
that it seemed almost as if she must be sleeping.

"You don't think that the Englishman will refuse to write the letter?"
insisted Collot with angry impatience.

"No!" replied Chauvelin quietly.

"But if he does?" persisted the other.

"If he does, I send the woman to Paris to-night and have him hanged as
a spy in this prison yard without further formality or trial..." replied
Chauvelin firmly; "so either way, you see, Citizen," he added in a
whisper, "the Scarlet Pimpernel is done for.... But I think that he will
write the letter."

"Parbleu! so do I!..." rejoined Collot with a coarse laugh.

Chapter XXXII: The Letter

Later on, when his colleague left him in order to see to the horses and
to his escort for to-night, Chauvelin called Sergeant Hebert, his old
and trusted familiar, to him and gave him some final orders.

"The Angelus must be rung at the proper hour, friend Hebert," he began
with a grim smile.

"The Angelus, Citizen?" quoth the Sergeant, with complete stupefaction,
"'tis months now since it has been rung. It was forbidden by a decree of
the Convention, and I doubt me if any of our men would know how to set
about it."

Chauvelin's eyes were fixed before him in apparent vacancy, while the
same grim smile still hovered round his thin lips. Something of that
irresponsible spirit of adventure which was the mainspring of all Sir
Percy Blakeney's actions, must for the moment have pervaded the mind of
his deadly enemy.

Chauvelin had thought out this idea of having the Angelus rung to-night,
and was thoroughly pleased with the notion. This was the day when the
duel was to have been fought; seven o'clock would have been the very
hour, and the sound of the Angelus to have been the signal for combat,
and there was something very satisfying in the thought, that that same
Angelus should be rung, as a signal that the Scarlet Pimpernel was
withered and broken at last.

In answer to Hebert's look of bewilderment Chauvelin said quietly:

"We must have some signal between ourselves and the guard at the
different gates, also with the harbour officials: at a given moment the
general amnesty must take effect and the harbour become a free port. I
have a fancy that the signal shall be the ringing of the Angelus: the
cannons at the gates and the harbour can boom in response; then the
prisons can be thrown open and prisoners can either