The Launching of Roger Brook

by Dennis Wheatley

  ‘I’m monstrous eager to get back to the inn, in order to collect my money,’ Roger replied. ‘But I feel that first I should let Mademoiselle de Rochambeau know that I have come safe out of this business.’

  ‘In that case I will drop you at the Hôtel de Rochambeau,’ volunteered the lawyer.

  Roger thanked him and, as they went out to the carriage, said a little diffidently: ‘And to you, Monsieur, I can never render thanks enough. My funds, unfortunately, are limited; but if your fee is within my means I will be most happy to pay it.’

  ‘Nay, I’ll not deprive you of your money,’ replied the lawyer kindly. ‘It needs but half an eye to see that you are an honest youth and that Fouché is a rogue who deserves to hang. Think no more of it, I beg. ’Twas a pleasure to have been of service to you; and, in any case, ’tis a part of my livelihood to handle all legal matters in which the de Rochambeau family are concerned. The Marquis is rich enough to pay me a louis or two for my morning’s work and never miss it.’

  Ten minutes later they were back at the Hôtel de Rochambeau. Maître Léger set Roger down there and drove away. Roger at once inquired if Mademoiselle Athénaïs would receive him.

  After a short wait she came downstairs. With the sunshine streaming on her golden hair he thought his newly acquired divinity more beautiful than ever. Swiftly he told her of the morning’s events and thanked her once more, both for the protection and the legal aid that she had afforded him.

  He thought she took the matter very calmly and even seemed a little distrait, as she asked him what he intended to do now that he was no longer menaced by a charge of murder.

  ‘I’ve hardly had time to think,’ he replied quickly. ‘But first I must return to the inn to see to the Doctor’s burial, and to secure my money.’

  ‘Of course,’ she agreed. ‘If the occasion arises you must let me know if I can be of any further service to you.’ Then, having given him her hand to kiss, she turned away to issue orders about some bandboxes that two of her maids were carrying downstairs.

  Roger was torn between the desire to linger with her and his urge to get back to the inn, but, seeing that she was now busy with other matters, he succumbed to the latter. With a farewell wave he left the mansion and, half running, half walking, made his way to the Du Guesclin.

  On his arrival he learned from the landlord that the Doctor’s body had been removed to the city mortuary. He then inquired about his purse. The man averred that he had neither found it nor had it been given to him, and together they went to the dark passage under the stairs to look for it.

  The passage was a straight one with no niches in which such a thing could have remained concealed for long. In vain Roger stared at first one end of it then the other, and ran several times up and down the stairs to ascertain the exact point at which the purse had dropped, and if it could possibly have got caught up on something during its fall. After a quarter of an hour of frantic searching he had to admit it was not there, and that whoever had picked it up must have made off with it.

  It occurred to him that Fouché might have seen it drop, and, after the abortive chase, returned to the inn to make a search for it that had proved successful; but he had no proof of that and any one of the servants of the inn, the landlord or a visitor, might equally well have picked it up and decided that fifty-four louis were worth straining one’s conscience to keep.

  Sadly depressed, he gave up the hunt and set about making arrangements for the Doctor’s funeral. Having no other resources than the few francs in his pocket he saddled Monsieur de Montaigne and, taking him to an apothecary, sold the remaining contents of his panniers for two louis. Then, he hardened his heart and disposed of the old mule for a further four crowns.

  That afternoon he managed to raise two more louis on the Doctor’s medical instruments; then he went in search of a priest who would give his poor old friend decent burial. As the verdict of the Court had spread about the town this proved far from easy; but by nightfall he found a poor priest in the parish of St. Helier de Vern who was broad-minded enough to undertake the business for a payment of three louis.

  Next morning he was the sole mourner at the Doctor’s funeral, and he came away from it with only four crowns and two francs in his pocket; the expenses of the funeral having absorbed the remainder of the money he had succeeded in raising from the sale of his late partner’s effects.

  Yet he was not unduly downhearted regarding his own prospects. He felt certain that his beautiful little protectress could find a means to open for him a new and much more promising career.

  On leaving the cemetery he hurried to the Hôtel de Rochambeau. At its door he was met by the supercilious Aldegonde. In less than a minute that pompous functionary shattered his hopes and took obvious delight in so doing.

  ‘Mademoiselle left yesterday for Monseigneur le Marquis’s château in the country,’ he announced with evident enjoyment. ‘And she will not be in Rennes again for several weeks.’ Upon which he rudely slammed the door.

  Sadly Roger turned away. Once again Georgina’s foretelling of his future had proved correct. No good had come to him from his partnership with old Aristotle Fénelon. He was back where he had started eleven weeks ago. In fact, his situation was somewhat worse, as the summer had gone; he was again almost penniless, and considerably further from home. At his age he could not conceivably set up to be a journeyman-doctor who had travelled the world in search of a hundred miraculous remedies, and he knew no other trade. Once more he was destitute in a strange land without either prospects or friends.

  12

  The Man in Green

  As Roger walked aimlessly away from the Hôtel de Rochambeau one fact emerged clearly from his unhappy musings; it was imperative that within the next few days he should find himself some sort of work. Rennes was the best part of fifty miles from St. Malo, its nearest seaport. Even had he now been prepared to admit defeat and endeavour to beg a passage home on promise of payment the other end, his few crowns would not support him for so long a tramp; and the poverty of the French countryside made it, unlike England, no place in which one could with any ease pick up a night’s board and lodging here and there in return for casual work. Whatever he might decide to do later, he saw that, for the time being, he must somehow secure employment in Rennes which would enable him, by careful saving, to build up a capital of at least five louis before taking any further decision as to his future.

  It then occurred to him that he was not altogether friendless. Maître Léger had not only given him very shrewd legal advice the day before on Athénaïs’s instructions, but behaved towards him in the most pleasant and kindly manner.

  Turning about he retraced his steps to the Hôtel and once more bearded the supercilious Monsieur Aldegonde, who told him that the lawyer lived in the Rue d’Antrain a few doors from the Hôtel de Ville, and that the street lay only just across the Place.

  Following these directions Roger soon found the house. It proved to be a commodious old building serving both as home and office, as could be seen from the green wire blinds in the ground floor room and the heads of several young men bowed over ledgers that were visible above them. Going in, Roger gave his name and asked to see Maître Léger.

  A youth, a little older than himself, with fiery red hair and a spotty face, took his message, and asked him to wait in a small musty-smelling ante-chamber. Ten minutes later he returned and conducted Roger to a room on the first floor, where he found the immaculately dressed lawyer seated at a big desk strewn with parchments and law books.

  ‘Good day to you, my young friend,’ said the man in green affably. ‘In what way can I be of service to you?’

  ‘I want your advice and help, if you would be kind enough to give it to me,’ replied Roger, sitting down in a comfortable elbow chair to which the lawyer waved him; and without beating about the bush he explained the precarious position in which Doctor Aristotle Fénelon’s death had left him.

  Maître Léger adjusted a pair of s
teel-rimmed spectacles which were now perched upon his thin, sharp nose, sat back with the tips of his fingers placed together and listened attentively. When Roger had done, he said:

  ‘Your position is certainly a difficult one, and I think that much your best course would be to return to your parents. If I advance you the necessary money for your journey to Strasbourg can you give me an honourable undertaking as to my reimbursement, in due course?’

  Roger flushed slightly. For a moment he thought of taking the money and using it to return to England, but his whole mind still revolted at the thought of reappearing penniless at home to throw himself on his father’s mercy; so he said, a trifle awkwardly:

  ‘Your offer, Monsieur, is most kindly meant, and I deeply appreciate it. But I left home on account of a most bitter quarrel with my stepfather, who had made my life unbearable, so I am most loath to go back as long as there is the least possibility of my being able to earn my own livelihood.’

  The lawyer nodded sympathetically. ‘Well, in that case, if you will tell me your qualifications, I will see if I can suggest anything.’

  ‘At school, Monsieur, I did well at composition and I write a fair hand. Unfortunately, I know nothing of bookkeeping, but I am strong in languages; my Greek is fair and my tutor was good enough to compliment me many times upon my Latin.’

  Maître Léger looked at him with a sudden increase of interest. ‘A good understanding of Latin is a valuable asset; and, of course, you speak and write fluent German?’

  This was a facer that Roger had not expected, and to have denied it would have immediately disclosed his story of being a native of Alsace to be false, so he avoided telling a direct lie by saying quickly: ‘I also did well in English; in fact, ’tis said that I have quite a gift for that tongue.’

  These languages, coupled with a legible hand and the ability to compose, clearly fit you to enter one of the learned professions,’ Maître Léger announced. ‘Has it ever occurred to you to take up the law?’

  Again Roger was slightly nonplussed. He had wanted a life of excitement and travel, and few things could have been further removed from that than the dry-as-dust occupation of poring over legal documents. But in his mind at this moment there was no thought of choosing a permanent career, only of obtaining some temporary work which would stave off starvation; so he answered tactfully: ‘No, Monsieur, but it is an honourable profession, and no doubt interesting.’

  The lawyer smiled drily. ‘It gives one as good a status in France as one can have if not born of the noblesse. But whether so high-spirited a young man as yourself would find it interesting is quite another matter. How old are you?’

  ‘Seventeen,’ lied Roger, stretching his age as far as he thought he could do so with plausibility.

  ‘You are a little old, then, to be bound as an apprentice; and ’tis the custom for parents whose boys are articled to me to pay a consideration for their learning the profession. So ’twould be resented by the others if I took you without a fee.’

  On seeing Roger’s face fall, Maître Léger went on tactfully: ‘However, that might be overcome. I have formed the impression that you have a quick and intelligent mind, and if your Latin is as good as you say I may be able to offer you employment.’ Sorting quickly through his papers he selected one and, passing it across his desk, added: ‘See what you can make of this.’

  For a moment Roger was sadly baffled by the legal terms with which the document was besprinkled, but he soon found he could understand enough of it to pronounce it to be a mortgage on some fields and a small vineyard, and to state the terms of interest and repayment.

  ‘Since one can hardly expect you to be acquainted with our legal jargon, that is none too bad,’ Maître Léger declared, ‘and most of the papers with which we are called on to deal are in Latin. I have recently lost my second Latin copyist, so I could offer you his place; but the remuneration would not be large.’

  ‘What figure have you in mind?’ asked Roger anxiously.

  ‘Twelve louis a year.’

  Again Roger’s face fell. It was less than five shillings a week. He had always known that clerks were a downtrodden and ill-paid class, but had not imagined the remuneration of their most junior grade to be quite as miserable as this.

  ‘’Tis very kind of you,’ he murmured unhappily, ‘but I fear I could barely live on that.’

  ‘You would not have to,’ the lawyer replied. ‘But perhaps I did not make my whole thought plain. We had been speaking of my apprentices and, while circumstances do not permit of your being articled to me, in view of your youth I was thinking of you in those terms. That is to say, you would bed and board with them here at my cost, and the louis a month would be yours to spend as you willed on small enjoyments or keeping some young woman in ribbons.’

  This put a very different complexion on the matter. A louis a month was no fortune and, Roger felt, a sad decline in his earnings after the near half a louis a day that he had been making as his share in his recent partnership. It seemed all wrong that the rewards of honest work should be so infinitely less than those of merry charlatanism, but that was to be expected; and the present offer at least meant security from want throughout the winter with a prospect of having saved enough to return to England by the spring if no better approach to fortune had occurred in the meantime. In fact, as the lawyer was usually paid to take his apprentices and in this case was offering a wage, it seemed he was behaving very generously; and Roger, with his usual honesty when not forced by circumstances to conceal his motives, said so when accepting the proposition.

  Maître Léger smiled again. ‘’Tis true that I was in part prompted by the thought that no man works well and happily unless he has a few francs for his private necessities in his pocket, yet I believe that I have the reputation in Rennes of a shrewd man at a bargain. You will learn soon enough that my apprentices are an idle, slovenly lot, with scarce a peck of brains or learning between them; whereas you, Monsieur Breuc, are clearly a young man of superior education and if you choose to apply yourself with even moderate endeavour to the tasks which are set you will, I have no doubt, earn your twelve louis a year and show me a good profit in addition.’

  ‘I shall certainly do my best to repay your kindness,’ Roger replied with genuine sincerity. ‘When do you wish me to start?’

  ‘Why, the sooner the better, since you have only to fetch your things from the Du Guesclin. Come with me now and I will present you to your future colleagues; then you can collect your belongings and settle in this evening.’

  As he stood up the lawyer paused a moment, staring down at his papers thoughtfully; then he said: ‘My senior apprentices are older than yourself and are still working without a wage after three years here. You will be sharing their accommodation and be one of them in all but name. I am anxious to avoid any jealousy arising from the fact that you are being paid, so I think it would be wise to resort to a small deception. My wife is a native of Artois and has many relatives in the northern provinces. I propose to give out that you are a distant cousin of hers, as the relationship will appear an adequate reason for the special arrangement I have made in your case.’

  ‘It is good of you to provide against my being subject to unpleasantness,’ said Roger. ‘But to carry the matter through would it not be advisable for you to present me to Madame Léger before I meet any of your employees, in order that we may arrange some details of this cousinship against anybody questioning me concerning it?’

  ‘I would do so, but Madame Léger accompanied me on my recent visit to Paris, and is not yet returned. I will inform her by letter of the arrangement, so that when she gets back she may greet you at once as her relative; but for the moment all you need tell anyone who questions you, is that your mother was a Colombat, since that was my wife’s maiden name.’ As he finished speaking, Maître Léger led the way downstairs and proceeded to introduce Roger to his new colleagues.

  The chief clerk was a bent old man named Fusier, but Brochàrd, his n
umber two, a broad-shouldered, thick-set man of about forty, struck Roger as having much more personality. Three other clerks were employed, Guigner, Taillepied and Ruttot, the latter being the senior Latin copyist under whom Roger was to work. He thought all of them dreary, depressed-looking men, and was thoroughly glad that he had no intention of making the law his permanent profession.

  The apprentices were introduced as Hutot, Quatrevaux, Douie, Monestot and Colas; that being the order of their seniority. Roger judged that the age he had given himself, of seventeen, made him younger than the two senior, about the same age as Douie and older than the two who had most recently joined the firm; but that in actual fact he was probably about of an age with the youngest.

  Hutot was a big, fair-haired, stupid-looking lout; Quatrevaux a dark thin fellow of better dress and appearance than the others; Douie the youth with the violent red hair who had shown him up to Maître Léger, Monestot a pimply-faced youngster who looked as if he had outgrown his strength; and Colas a bright-eyed, impish-looking lad.

  Roger found that the whole of the ground floor appeared to be offices. The apprentices all worked in a room at the back, under the supervision of the thick-set second head, Brochard. The clerks occupied the front room, with the exception of the old chief clerk Fusier, who had an office to himself on the opposite side of the stairs, next to the waiting-room. It was decided that as Roger was to be employed copying documents it would be best for him to work in the clerks’ room at a desk next to that of his senior, Ruttot.

  When the introductions had been completed Roger was handed over to the junior apprentice, Colas, to be shown his living quarters. The mischievous-looking youngster took him upstairs to the top of the house where, beneath the roof, two attics had been converted into one room for the apprentices. Even so, the space seemed extraordinarily small; the six truckle beds were no more than a few inches apart and the low ceiling made the crowded chamber appallingly stuffy.