Vintage Love

by Clarissa Ross

  “Revenge can be blinding. One should avoid it. As an example Valmy made a bad mistake in exacting vengeance from you. He made you hate him.”

  “True,” she agreed.

  “I have the cook and his kitchen maid in custody,” he went on. “And I have the cook’s key to the rear door of the mansion.”

  “Then we should be able to get in easily,” Kingston exclaimed.

  “As long as someone doesn’t spot you as impostors,” the master spy said. “In that case all is lost.”

  Betsy said, “So that is why you will have the others approach by the main sewer.”

  “Yes. And once you are in the house, it will be your task to make sure that the passage to the sewer is not in any way shut off. Some houses which were on the sewer have since closed the entry off because of the plague of rats.”

  She nodded. “We can do that.”

  “If you find it possible, you can try and approach the emperor and tell him that he must deliver himself to the others when they arrive and go with them. It is his only hope for survival.”

  “I will speak to him if I can and hope that he will believe me,” she said.

  “He did not have so many beautiful girls as friends on Saint Helena that he should forget you,” the old master spy said.

  “When do you want us to leave?” she asked.

  “As soon as you can be ready.”

  Kingston rose. “It will take me the best part of an hour to prepare myself.”

  Betsy said, “I can manage more quickly than that. I’ll borrow a maid’s outfit and a shawl from the landlady.”

  Black nodded. “She will supply the items. I have already told her about it.”

  She smiled. “I wonder what sort of guests the poor woman thinks she has.”

  “English and quite mad!” the master spy said with a bleak smile. “Come to me when you are ready to leave, and I shall give you the key and my blessing.”

  “What about the others?” she asked.

  “Their departure will be timed to yours,” the old master spy said. “I think that between the parties we have a good chance of rescuing the emperor.”

  “Providing he hasn’t been removed before we get there,” she said.

  “I don’t think Valmy dares leave the house with Paris so filled with soldiers. He won’t dare attempt his vaunted uprising until he thinks suspicion has eased and the army of Louis’s supporters are off guard.”

  Betsy was standing before the dresser mirror in the bedroom inspecting herself in the maid’s uniform when Eric came into the room. She could tell at once he was upset.

  He said, “What is this I hear about you and Kingston?”

  She smiled. “We’re to impersonate the cook and a maid.”

  “It’s too risky! You know how well Valmy keeps his headquarters guarded,” he objected.

  “He may not have so many now. And in any case Kingston will look very much like the cook. And nobody ever notices a maid.”

  “No one but the other kitchen help,” Eric said. “You might get inside, but that would be it. Someone would be bound to notice you.”

  She said, “I don’t agree. From my experience the guards pay little attention to the household staff.”

  He stared at her in dismay. “After all you’ve gone through, you’re ready to take another such risk?”

  “I can’t let Felix Black down now.”

  “You can if you wish.”

  “I don’t want to. And in any case you’ll be nearby. It’s not like before. The idea is to have us join forces.”

  “I’m afraid for you.”

  She went to him. “You mustn’t be!”

  He put his arms round her and kissed her tenderly. Then he held her to him tightly. He said, “I can’t forget the state you were in when I found you in that madhouse.”

  “That’s over with,” she said. “We can’t let it spoil our chances.”

  He sighed. “I see it is no use. Black must have used his hypnotic powers on you.”

  “I think tonight will end the chase,” she told him.

  “I hope so,” he said, and he kissed her again.

  Kingston was downstairs waiting for her. She was impressed by the way he’d disguised himself. He had padded his body so that he seemed at least fifty pounds heavier and the black beard and eyebrows together with a pot hat slouched down over his forehead gave him an entirely different appearance.

  He handed her the big shopping basket. “How do I look?” he asked.

  “If I hadn’t known, I wouldn’t have recognized you,” she said.

  “I have the key,” he told her. “There’s a pistol for you in the basket. I’m also carrying one.”

  “At least that gives us some chance.”

  The actor sighed. “I suppose we’d better get on our way.”

  “I don’t even know the address of the house.”

  “I do,” he said. “We’ll take a carriage to within a block of it, then walk the rest of the way.”

  She asked, “Have the others left yet?”

  “A few minutes ago,” Kingston said. “I prefer our task, dangerous as it is, to going down in those sewers.”

  “We may still have to meet them down there,” she reminded him.

  It was another dark night. But as they rode through the streets of the great city, she was amazed that so many people were about, especially those in uniform. Every so often a group of cavalry would ride by, and she saw clusters of foot soldiers at various corners.

  Betsy glanced at Kingston across the carriage and said, “You’d almost think Paris was prepared for siege!”

  “That is what Valmy threatened!”

  “Someone has spread the word.”

  “I think they will close in on him soon,” the actor said. “It is now just a question of who gets to Valmy first.”

  “I hope we do,” she said. “I still want to see the emperor protected.”

  “There’s a thin line of us to help him now,” Kingston said.

  “We can still manage it if nothing happens,” she said. And at once she knew this was a ridiculous statement. They could manage anything if they were not prevented. The unhappy fact was that the odds of their being prevented were great.

  The carriage halted, and they got out. Kingston paid the driver and then told her, “It’s over there toward the river.”

  They walked along in silence, she keeping a full foot behind him as Felix Black had instructed her. This was the respectful distance for the maid to keep from the cook.

  As they drew near the house, Kingston told her over her shoulder, “That’s it! Directly ahead!”

  “We must go to the back door.”

  “Yes,” he said. And then he halted suddenly and in a nervous voice whispered, “Do you see what I see?”

  She stared ahead in the near darkness and then began to make out the blurred figures of soldiers milling about in the street in front of the house. There were also some mounted officers riding among them.

  Betsy gasped. “It looks as if they’re ready to make an attack on the house.”

  “If they do it at once, we’re out of it,” Kingston said.

  “I think they’re just preparing,” she ventured. “We can’t lose any time. We ought to go straight in now and try and get to the emperor before they smash down the front door and overflow the place.”

  “I don’t like it,” Kingston worried.

  “We can’t turn back.”

  “What if we’re caught in there, and they take us for being one of Valmy’s crowd?”

  Betsy said, “I don’t think even then they would stoop to shoot mere servants. And that is how we’re dressed.”

  “Will they take time to find out?”

  “I think so,” she said. “Don’t be so nervous.”

  He eyed her grimly. “You’re a wonder to be this calm after all you went through.”

  “I have you with me this time,” she said. “They caught us before by ticking us off one by one.�
��

  They made their way around to the back of the shuttered mansion, half expecting to find military men there, but there were none. They were all congregated in the front. It was as if they felt the rear door was of no concern.

  Her heart pounded wildly as Kingston fitted the key in the door and opened it. They both entered the vestibule as quietly as they could and moved on to the kitchen. They found themselves in a large room completely empty at the moment.

  He whispered, “What now?”

  She drew her pistol from the shopping bag and held it ready. At her side George Frederick Kingston glanced around him, then moved slowly forward toward the front of the house with Betsy close by him.

  The place gave her a strange feeling. There seemed to be no guards around at all. Then suddenly from behind them there came a harsh voice.

  “What are you two up to?” the voice demanded.

  They turned and found themselves looking at a tall stern man in butler’s uniform with a large revolver in his hand pointed straight at them. He stared at them and said.

  “You’re fakes! She’s not the maid and you’re not the cook! Drop those guns!”

  There was nothing else but to drop the weapons. He quickly picked them up and dropped them in the basket. Then with the basket on his arm he backed slowly into the big kitchen again. He nodded to them, “Come along! Move smartly!”

  They did what he told them. And he moved slowly to a corner of the kitchen and opened a door to a medium-sized closet. He stood close to the door and jerked his head as he instructed them, “You two in there!”

  She felt a true feeling of despair along with her fright. Once they were locked in the closet, they would be at the mercy of Valmy. She made a move as if to step inside, then instead shoved hard against the butler and caught him by surprise so that he stumbled back into the closet with the revolver in one hand and the basket in the other!

  Betsy swung the door closed as the man inside began to hammer on it. She cried to Kingston to turn the key as she pressed all her weight against the door. Kingston turned the key, and the butler was caught in his own trap!

  She said, “That’s that!”

  Kingston grasped her by the arm. “He fixed us just the same!”

  “No one seems to be hearing him,” she said, ignoring the clamor the butler made as he pounded at the door.

  “I don’t mean that,” Kingston told her. “He has our weapons! They were in the bloomin’ basket!”

  “Oh!” she said groaning. Then, “Never mind, we shall have to manage without them.”

  “We won’t get far, I know that,” Kingston whispered fiercely.

  She whispered back, “maybe we can snatch a weapon from the next one who comes by!”

  The frail man stared at him, saying, “I should have listened and known better,” he turned and let Valmy direct him toward a door along the rear hallway.

  They moved to the big stairway at the front of the house. Outside the sound of the gathering army group could be plainly heard. It meant they would be attacking soon. And there was this eerie silence and the great house was seemingly deserted. She glanced toward the doors to the right, large double doors, and from behind them she heard voices suddenly in an urgent dialogue.

  She gave a signal to Kingston to crouch in the shadows under the stairway so as not to be seen. She also took a place beside him, scarcely daring to breathe!

  The double doors opened, and Valmy came out in a mood of angry tension. He cried, “We have no choice! It must be the sewers!”

  Behind him came the frail-looking gray-haired man whom she remembered from Venice: Napoleon, even more thin and ill looking than he had been. The former emperor was wearing a dark jacket and white breeches in his familar style.

  Now he faced Valmy and said, “I cannot do it! It is beneath my dignity! I have not come all the long way to Paris for this!”

  “Damn your dignity!” Valmy said in a frenzy. “Don’t you understand? They are outside about to attack the house and take us prisoners. The king’s army! All my guards have deserted me! There’s no hope but the sewers!”

  “Then go,” the worn former emperor said. “I shall stand my ground. The king will give me the honorable consideration of which I’m entitled!”

  “Fool!” Valmy cried. “You will come with me!” And he whipped out a pistol and pointed it at the emperor.

  By this time the clamor from outside was so loud that the noise of the butler trying to escape from the kitchen closet could not be heard.

  Soon after Valmy escaped with his prisoner, she motioned Kingston to emerge from their hiding place. She raced across to the room from which the two had come to try and quickly find a weapon of some sort. A hasty glance showed nothing. And then she saw it as it lay on a polished table near the door. A sword in a sheath! And she recognized the sheath and knew it to be the emperor’s sword!

  She seized the sheath and drew out the sword and joined Kingston again. “All I could find,” she told the astonished little actor. “We must hurry after them!”

  “He’ll kill us if he sees us,” Kingston quavered.

  “One of us, perhaps,” she said. “The other must finish him.”

  They ran down the hall with the splintering of the front door and the shouts of incoming soldiers in their ears. They found the door open through which the emperor and Valmy had vanished. She led the way, eyes alert on the shadowed stairway as they descended, sword at the ready in her hand.

  Kingston was breathing hard behind her. “Caught between them!” he gasped.

  “This way,” she said as they reached the cellar.

  Ahead was an open trap door, and there was a ladder leading down to the sewers from it. She turned to Kingston and told him, “I’ll go first!”

  Chapter Seventeen

  BETSY STEPPED gingerly off the ladder and tried to adjust her eyes to the near darkness of the dank sewer. Then Kingston came down after her. A short distance ahead they saw the glow of a lantern.

  She whispered, “That will be them. Trying to make their way to another house and escape!”

  “It’s Valmy wants that, not Napoleon!” Kingston whispered in return.

  “I know,” she said. “Watch your step!” she warned. For at that point the tunnel narrowed, and there was only a platform of perhaps two feet running alongside the poisonous-looking sewer water.

  She pressed close to the slimy side of the tunnel, and Kingston did the same. Slowly they gained on Valmy and his distinguished prisoner. All at once the platform widened again to about four feet.

  Ahead Valmy said, “We should be able to find an entrance to a house about here!”

  “I will go no further!” his captive said, facing him sternly.

  “You’re right! It is the end of the road!” Valmy sneered and he lifted his pistol and fired at the man on whom he had pinned all his hopes.

  The former emperor received the bullet direcly in the area of the heart. Blood poured out over his waistcoat, and he fell back into the polluted stream of sewerage and vanished.

  Betsy watched in awe, and a great rage surged up in her. “Traitor!” she cried! And she lifted the emperor’s sword.

  A surprised Valmy turned around quickly and aimed his pistol to shoot her, but she was too quick for him. She was close to him and the emperor’s sword was through his chest as he pressed the trigger of his weapon. The pistol went off with the bullet harmlessly spending itself in the wall of the tunnel.

  Valmy’s expression was one of sheer horror as she withdrew the sword from him. He lifted his hands as he tried to hurl some imprecation at her. Then blood spurted out from his mouth, and he tottered back to join his victim in the sewer stream.

  Kingston was at her side, panting, “I didn’t think you’d manage!”

  She was staring at the dark stream of the sewer. “I had to,” she said, her own breath coming with difficulty. “I had to do it for Napoleon and for myself!”

  It was then the voices of Eric and the others
came to them from far along the sewer tunnel. She turned and touched Kingston on the arm.

  “Down that way!” she said. “We’ll meet them.”

  He nodded and started along the dark tunnel. She held the bloodstained sword in her hands for a moment and then she tossed it into the polluted river. She picked up the lantern which was on its side but still burning and followed Kingston.

  They joined with the other group within a few minutes. Eric took her in his arms and said nothing for a time. Then he began to question her as they stood there — a forlorn little squad in the dank tunnel under the Paris streets.

  “What happened?” he asked.

  “Valmy killed him,” she said. “I finished Valmy with the emperor’s sword. They’re both somewhere there in the river of sewerage!”

  Eric gave a small gasp of dismay. “Felix Black will be unhappy.”

  “There was no other way,” she said.

  They found a passage to the surface and then took a carriage back to the pension. Captain Gray was to return to his ship at once, there being no reason to delay his sailing any longer.

  O’Meara left them at the door of the pension. He seemed in low spirits as he told them, “I will make my way back to England on my own. It has been a sad night for me.”

  “For all of us,” she said, touched by his sorrow.

  “Not the same for any of you,” the Irishman said looking away. “I had great hopes for him. I always believed.” And giving her a last look which could have been one of reproach, he walked off into the darkness.

  Kingston stared after him indignantly, “The nerve of the man! You’d almost think he was blaming us for what happened.”

  “He’s a romantic,” she said with a small tremor in her voice. “He has to blame someone!”

  Eric shook his head. “It is you who are the romantic! He’s a stubborn firebrand of an Irishman! They’re never to be satisfied!”

  They went inside and were greeted by a long-faced landlady. She said, “I’m glad you have come. Monsieur Black has suffered a severe attack. The doctor is with him now. I do not know!”

  Betsy felt panic. “He was ill before we left.”

  “Let us find out how he is,” Eric said.