The Rising Storm rb-3

by Dennis Wheatley

  The task he had set himself was no easy one, as his object was to form a cypher within a cypher; so that should the despatch fall into the hands of anyone who already knew Madame Marie Antoinette's private code, or be given to someone as clever as Mr. Pitt's cypher expert, they would still not be able to decipher it in the first case, or break it without extreme difficulty in the other. Yet the process must be accomplished according to a set of rules simple enough for him to carry in his own mind; so that on delivering the re-coded copy to the Grand Duke he would be able to tell him how to turn it back into the Queen's cypher. A further complication was that he dared not make any drastic alteration in the symbols or formation of the letter, as if he did and the re-coded copy was stolen from him by someone who knew her cypher at sight, they would immediately recognize it as a fake.

  For over an hour he tried out various transpositions, until he had formulated one which he felt was as good as any he could devise; then he began to write on his parchment, forming each letter with great care, so that when he had done the re-coded copy had a superficial resemblance to the original. Having finished, he uncorked a bottle of wine he had brought up with him, had a drink, and attended to certain other matters he had in mind; after which he inserted his copy in the thick envelope that had previously contained the Queen's letter, warmed the underside of the wax seals that he had lifted and carefully resealed it.

  The job had taken him the best part of five hours, so it was now well after midnight; but he had no thought of bed. Instead, he sat down to the table again and commenced a letter to Mr. Pitt. He had already sent one despatch, before leaving Paris for Fontainebleau, making a general report on the situation as far as he could then assess it/But since that he had had his invaluable interview with de Perigord, spoken personally with the Queen, and spent a whole evening listening to the views of a group of noblemen who were among her most intimate friends; in addition he had to explain the reason why he was temporarily aban­doning the work he had been given to undertake a mission to Italy; so there was much to say.

  Fortunately he possessed the gift of expressing himself as fluently on paper as in speech, so his pen moved without hesitation while filling page after page with fine writing; but, nevertheless, it was close on three in the morning before he finally rose from the table and began to undress.

  In consequence he slept late, but even when he woke he did not hurry to get up; and, having rung for his breakfast to be brought to him, he found his mind turning to the Senorita d'Aranda.

  He had not given her a thought since they had parted two nights before, but now her long, oval face and striking black eyebrows re­appeared in his mental vision with extraordinary vividness. Idly, he wondered what would have transpired if she had been remaining on at Court, and on his return from Italy he had followed his impulse to develop her acquaintance. Although that acquaintance had been very brief, from the beginning she had made no effort to disguise her interest in and liking for him. She was clearly no coquette but a straightforward person, so if he had laid siege to her it seemed highly likely that an affaire would have developed between them.

  Roger had no desire to marry, but even had he felt that way inclined, he knew that there could be no question of making Isabella d'Aranda his wife. For him it would have been a brilliant match, as she was the daughter of the greatest man in Spain after King Carlos, and her family were immensely wealthy. But for that very reason they would never have countenanced her marrying a simple gentleman of modest means such as himself. Moreover, as a Spaniard she would certainly be a Catholic, while he was a Protestant, and mixed marriages at that date were still regarded by both sides with abhorrence.

  He knew well enough that no platonic affaire would have kept him interested for long, and wondered if he could have made her his mistress. As she had been so long in France, and high society there indulged in perpetual immoralities covered only with a graceful cloak of elaborately observed conventions, it was quite possible that she had been the mistress of one or more men already; and, if so, her seduction would not prove very difficult. On the other hand she was unmarried, and so by convention still forbidden fruit to the more scrupulous courtiers; and the Queen was known to regard any immorality on the part of her ladies with great severity. All things considered, Roger thought it unlikely that Isabella had as yet taken a lover.

  But she would, of course, as soon as she was married. All women of her rank married whoever their parents chose for them, so love did not enter into such alliances; and it would have been considered unnatural in them had they failed to take a succession of lovers after­wards. Somehow, though, Roger did not see Isabella going to bed with one man after another. She was too intense to become promiscuous. He thought it much more likely that she would become desperately enamoured of some man who possessed brains as well as looks, probably someone considerably older than herself, and remain faithful to him, perhaps for life, or at all events as long as he remained faithful to her. Then, after he died or left her, she would be heartbroken for a while, but eventually get over it and find solace in her children.

  If that were so, it would have proved no easy matter to make her his mistress, had he had the chance, and he knew that he would not have attempted to do so had he found her to be still a virgin. All the same, her very intensity was a sign that once aroused she would be capable of great passion; and Roger, having known Georgina, greatly preferred really passionate women who met a man half-way, to the kind that pretended to faint, then suffered an attack of conscience and wept copiously afterwards.

  Still, the question of whether Isabella's hidden fires had yet led her to indulge herself in gallantry, or not, was of no moment now. If she had left Fontainebleau the day before, as she had said she intended to do, she would by now have accomplished the first stage of her long journey to Spain. At a rough calculation he estimated that she would have spent the night at Pethiviers, or even perhaps have got as far as Orleans. In any case when he took the road to Italy their ways would diverge further apart each day, so it was waste of time to speculate further about her.

  Dismissing her from his mind he finished his breakfast, then made a leisurely toilette. At a quarter past ten he left the inn and, as on the previous day, finding no hackney-coach in the vicinity took an omnibus down to the Pont Neuf. Then he once more walked along the Quai de Louvre and crossed the Jardin des Tuileries. On its far side he entered a small cafe, sat down at a table and ordered a glass of Jerez wine. It was now close on eleven o'clock and he had come there to keep a rendezvous he had made the previous day.

  If, while posing as a Frenchman, he had been noticed going into the British Embassy on several occasions by any of his acquaintances, or a police-agent stationed in the quarter, that might have aroused most unwelcome suspicions; but he had to keep in touch with it, both for drawing funds from time to time and to send in his reports, so that they might be despatched to London in the security of the Embassy bag.

  To get over the difficulty, he had arranged with Mr. Daniel Hailes, who, apart from the Ambassador, was the only member of the Embassy Staff who knew of his secret activities, a simple code. They had selected a number of quiet cafes, each near one of the public gardens. If Roger sent an envelope to Mr. Hailes containing chestnut leaves it meant: "meet me at the cafe in the Palais Royale’; if oak leaves, the cafe" on the edge of the Bois de Vincennes; if plane tree leaves the cafe opposite the Tuileries, and so on. The number of leaves, designated the hour; the addition of one twig, "tomorrow', of two twigs "the day after tomorrow", etc. As Mr. Hailes went every morning to Monsieur Aubert to be shaved, it was simple for Roger to leave an envelope there any time during the day with lie certainty that, even if the next day was a Sunday, Mr. Hailes would be given it first thing in the morning.

  In this way they could meet without the necessity of Roger having to put anything at all on paper; and in the event of somebody at Monsieur Aubert's opening the envelopes they would not have the faintest idea what the leaves and twigs meant;
so no spy could be sent to the meeting places with orders to try to overhear something of the highly secret conversations which took place at them.

  Roger had not been seated for many minutes in the cafe when the portly, middle-aged Mr. Hailes appeared and, giving him a friendly nod, sat down at his table. The diplomat had the rather prim appearance of a wealthy merchant and he was dressed more soberly than was cus­tomary with foreigners of his status who were attached to the Court. But he and his chief, the Duke of Dorset, formed a long-standing partnership that accounted for the particular efficiency of the British Embassy in Paris at that date. The Ambassador was a man of wit, wealth and fashion; he was extremely popular in French society and even the Queen frequently attended his thes dansant, which had become a regular feature of the Paris winter season. The First Secretary, on the other hand, kept in the background, but little escaped him, as he was both intelligent and extremely shrewd. So while His Grace stayed up all night, winning good will, Mr. Hailes worked all day, providing the brains and direction of policy.

  Roger and Mr. Hailes greeted one another in French, and as though they had met purely by chance; then when the latter had ordered himself a drink, he said with a sly smile:

  "Well, my dashing Chevalier? What is it you wish of me now? Not more money, I trust; for I furnished you with five hundred ecus no longer ago than last week."

  "You have guessed it in one," Roger replied with a grin. "To console you a little I will confess that I still have most of that five hundred, but I shall require at least a further thousand, and I would prefer it in bills of exchange to coin, as I am about to set out for Italy."

  "And why, may I ask?"

  "The matter concerns a lady, and one of the most beautiful I have ever met."

  "I congratulate you," said Mr. Hailes dryly. "But in such a case I fear you must look elsewhere for your expenses."

  "On the contrary. Indirectly, this is very much the King's business, so I consider myself fully entitled to ask you, as His Majesty's repre­sentative, to supply me with funds."

  “May one enquire the lady's name?"

  Roger lent forward and lowered his voice. " 'Tis Marie Antoinette."

  Mr. Hailes did not blink an eyelid; he simply said: "Pray continue, I am all attention. "

  Without further ado Roger launched out into an account of his recent experiences. Then, producing his report and the Queen's letter, he handed them over.

  For a moment Mr. Hailes remained silent, but having stuffed the two packets away in his pockets, he remarked with his dry smile: "I think Mr. Pitt does well to employ you. Will a thousand ecus be enough ? You can have more if you wish."

  "I thank you," Roger replied. "But I should be able to manage comfortably on that, as I have no intention of staying in Italy longer than I need; and I have reserve funds of my own which I could use in an emergency."

  Mr. Hailes nodded. "That is settled then. Where shall I send the money?"

  "Do you know a horse-dealer who is something less of a rogue than most?"

  "His Grace recently bought a pair of greys for his new barouche from a man next the sign of the Three Flagons in the Rue Beauberg, and I thought their price not excessive."

  "Then send it by one of the Embassy messengers to meet me there at three o'clock this afternoon. I have to buy a mount for my journey and may as well patronize His Grace's man as any other."

  After a moment Mr. Hailes said: "I approve your decision to undertake this mission; but all the same 'tis a thousand pities that you should be leaving Paris just at a time when such momentous events are in the offing."

  "I, too, regret it on that score," Roger agreed. "But tell me, what was the cause of the riot yesterday? You are the first person to whom I have spoken this morning, and I could obtain naught but obviously spurious accounts of it last night."

  " 'Twas by far the most serious disturbance that has yet taken place in Paris, although from what I hear the riots which occurred in Marseilles some weeks back were of an even more extensive nature. Yet this was in all conscience bad enough; for a number of the troops as well as of the mob were killed in the affair, and 'tis said that the wounded who have been accommodated-at the Hotel Dieu total several hundred."

  Roger looked at his companion in considerable surprise. " 'Twas then virtually a battle! But whence came the spark that ignited this powder magazine?"

  "It seems that a certain Monsieur Reveillon, who is a manufacturer of paper in quite a large way, had been asked by his workmen for a rise in wages on account of the increased price of bread; and that he refused it to them. The story goes that he declared in public that fifteen sols a day was ample for any workman to live upon, and that incensed by this they met before his house on Monday night to burn his effigy. The appearance of some French and Swiss guards on the scene deterred them from any material outrage at the time, but they gathered again by midday yesterday in a most evil temper.

  "The Faubourg St. Antoine, where Reveillon has hisv factory and also lives, contains the worst slums in the city; so his workmen were soon joined by riff-raff of all kinds and the mob was further swollen by bands of sympathizers marching from all quarters of it. In view of the disturbance the previous night detachments of troops had been posted at all the approaches to Reveillon's house, so the mob could not get at the object of their fury, but by early afternoon the streets round about had become blocked by a crowd of several thousand malcontents."

  Mr. Hailes paused to sip his drink, then went on: "As you will be aware, the road to the Bois de Vincennes passes through that quarter. Yesterday it so happened that His Highness of Orleans was racing his horses against those of Monsieur le Comte d'Artois in the Bois, so many persons of rank and fashion were on their way thither. The sight of their handsome equipages inflamed the mob further; in spite of the efforts of additional bodies of troops that were now being hurried to the scene, many of the carriages were forced to turn back, and serious fighting broke out between the troops and the people.

  "It continued for some hours and the military succeeded in main­taining a cordon round Reveillon's premises until about five o'clock. Then the Duchess d'Orleans drove up to one of the barriers they had formed, on her way back from the races. She asked permission for her carriage to pass, and apparently the officer did not feel that he could refuse such an important person. Immediately the barrier was opened the mob surged through with the carriage and a general melee ensued.

  "Apparently the troops managed to prevent the rabble from getting into Reveillon's house and he escaped with the aid of his neighbours, but they forced their way into that next door, stripped it of its contents and burnt them in the street. Many of the rioters were shot down, but others got up on to the roofs and tearing the slates from them hurled these missiles at the troops below, severely injuring considerable num­bers. Eventually order was restored, but not before the whole garrison of Paris had been placed under arms, so you can judge the magnitude of the disturbance."

  "What sort of a person is this Reveillon ?" Roger asked. "Is he in fact a bad employer?"

  "On the contrary. And that is what makes the affair so mysterious. He is a good, honest man, who started life as a poor workman himself, and has risen to his present affluence solely by hard work and ability. Having known poverty in his early days he looks after the well-being of his workpeople far better than the average employer, and pays none of them less than twenty-four sols a day. Moreover, when trade was so bad last winter he kept them all on out of charity, although for some months his factory was standing idle. 'Tis that which makes it impossible to believe that he ever said that fifteen sols a day was enough for any labourer to live on."

  "Have you any theory why he should have been singled out for such unwelcome attention?"

  "Possibly it was because he is standing for election to the Tiers-Etat in opposition to a firebrand; and has brought the hatred of the rabble on himself as a result of his moderate opinions. But I cannot help believing that there is more behind it than that. The
probability is that whatever he did say was seized upon and deliberately distorted with the view to provoking a riot."

  Roger nodded. "Is there the least truth in the rumours running round last night that Reveillon is in some way in the service of the Queen?"

  "Not an iota! 'Tis just another calumny against that poor woman. No opportunity is ever lost by her enemies to besmirch her with fresh mire."

  "And what of His Highness of Orleans ? Do you regard it as no more than a coincidence that it should have been his wife who enabled the mob to penetrate the barrier the troops had erected?"

  Mr. Hailes's eyes narrowed. "There is the further coincidence that the riot should have occurred on a day that His Highness was racing his horses at Vincennes; otherwise it would have been remarked upon as strange that his wife should be driving through the poorest quarter of the city. Moreover, the fact that bands of marchers came from so many different parts of it to join the original demonstrators definitely points to the whole affair having been organized beforehand. For a long time past His Highness has gone out of his way to gain popularity for himself at the expense of his Sovereigns, and one can hardly escape the conclusion that he is secretly working for the overthrow of his cousin the King. Yet there is little proof that is so, unless we regard his connection with the Freemasons as such."

  "He is Grand Master of the Order in France, is he not?"

  "He is." Mr. Hailes drummed with his finger-tips gently on the table. "That in itself is no treason; for the Masons are an offshoot of the German Rosicrucians and Illuminati, and are supposed to do no more than concern themselves with mystical matters. But I know for a fact that under cover of these activities they pursue political aims. Nearly every leading figure in the troubles that have afflicted France in the past few years has been a Mason; and 'tis my belief that His Highness is using the widespread ramifications of this secret society to bring about a revolution."