' Why, they'd 'ave sent I to the galleys. But by givin' you away I've saved me bacon, ain't I? '
Roger managed an unpleasant little laugh.'1 wouldn't count on that. These Frenchmen of the Revolution have a nasty habit of using one enemy to bring about the death of another, then ridding themselves of his betrayer. I ought to know, seeing that I am a Frenchman myself.'
'You a Frenchie! ' Giffens snorted. 'Don't give me such gab. I know different. You're Admiral Brook's son, just as I tells the officer when 'e questions me an 'our back.'
' I've no doubt you believe so,' Roger said quietly. ' But in that you are wrong. How long is it since you think you last saw me? '
Giffens scratched his^head. 'Let's see now. Miss Amanda were married in the summer o' ninety, weren't she? Then you come down to Walhampton with she the following spring; so 'twould be getting on seven year agone. But I seed you many a time afore that.'
' No, it was my English cousin, Roger Brook, you saw. We are near the same age and have a striking resemblance. But I am of the French branch of the family and was born in Strasbourg. That is why my name is spelt B-r-e-u-c.'
'Them's a pack o' lies fit only for the marines. Seems to 'ave slipped your memory that only yesterday you played the fine English gentleman an' threatened me with a floggin'. You was Mr. Roger Brook then, right enough, an' made no pretence otherwise.'
' Indeed, no; and I'd have been out of my mind to do so, seeing that I was passing myself off as him in order to get back to France.'
' That's another tall one. 'Ow come it that you recognized me, then? It was you as said to me, " 'Aven't I seen your face some place afore? " Remember? '
'Certainly. And I had. On several occasions while our two countries were still at peace I stayed at Lymington with my relatives, and more than once I visited Walhampton with the Admiral—or Captain Brook, as he then was.'
Giffens was evidently shaken, but he stubbornly shook his head and declared, ' I'll not believe it. I'll be danged if I do.'
Sensing the doubt he had sown in the man's mind, Roger pressed his advantage, and retorted, 'You will continue to disbelieve me at your peril. Listen, Giffens. Believe it or not, I am a Frenchman and a Colonel on the Staff of the most important General in France. There are hundreds of officers in the French Army to whom my face is well known. When we reach the place to which we are being taken I shall demand to see the local Military Commander. I'll then have no difficulty in establishing my true identity. I shall, of course, at once be freed. But what of you? If you persist in this idea of yours and make it more difficult for me to get a fair hearing I vow I'll see to it that you are sent to the galleys. If, on the other hand, you are prepared to admit that you may have been mistaken I'll see that you are treated decently and perhaps even arrange an exchange for you.'
For the better part of a minute Giffens remained silent, then he muttered, ' I'll 'ave to think about it. I told the bloke what did the interpreting that my politics was red-'ot Republican, an' arter that they treated me very friendly-like. So as things be I ain't afraid they'll send me to the galleys. But say I goes back on what I said about ye, all the odds is they'll act very different. I've still 'alf a mind that you'se lying; but even given I'm wrong about that, maybe none'11 be found as knows you for a French Colonel, so they'll shoot you just the same. That 'ud be 'ard luck on you, but on me too. No sayin' I were a Republican would do me no good then. They'd clamp the fetters on me an' afore you was cold in your grave I'd find meself a slave in a dockyard.'
There was sound reasoning behind Giffen's argument. As Roger knew only too well, the chances of coming across an officer with whom he could claim acquaintance were all too slender and, although he continued to argue with the man for some while longer, he could not persuade him to commit himself.
Nevertheless, being by nature an optimist, Roger derived some little comfort from their conversation. It was Giffens who had denounced him and if, as he now thought probable, he was to be given some form of trial, Giffens would be the principal witness against him. It was no small achievement to have both sown doubt in his mind and scared him. Whereas before he would undoubtedly have given his evidence with malicious gusto, it now seemed fairly certain that even if he did not hedge he would exercise some degree of caution in what he said.
As the cart jogged on across the windswept downs both its occupants began to suffer from the cold. Giffens could slap his arms across his chest now and then to keep his circulation going. He had also had a hot breakfast, whereas Roger had an empty stomach and, with his hands tied behind him, could do no more than drum with his feet on the floorboards of the cart. Except that it had a hood the cart might easily have been taken for a tumbril and after an hour in it Roger's spirits had again fallen so low that he began to think of it as one in which he was being driven to the guillotine.
At length, between the undrawn curtains above the backboard, glimpses of occasional houses could be seen. Then the cart clattered down a succession of mean streets, to pull up outside a big building in a square, after a journey that had lasted about two hours. As Roger was helped out, he recognized the place as Boulogne and the buildijig as its Hotel de Ville.
His guards hustled him inside, took him down a flight of stone stairs to a basement and handed him over to a turnkey, who locked him, cold, hungry and miserable, into a cell. But he was not left to shiver there for long. After a quarter of an hour the turnkey returned with a companion, and they marched him up to the ground floor again, then into a spacious courtroom.
Earlier that morning the uniforms of Roger's captors had confirmed his belief that they were not Regular troops but Coastguards, with similar functions to the English Preventives, whose principal task was to stop smuggling. In consequence, as he had feared might be the case, he now saw that he was about to be tried not by a military but by a civil court. That meant that he would stand less chance of convincing its members that he was a Colonel in the French Army.
At one time the courtroom had been a handsome apartment, but the walls were now stained with damp, the windows long uncleaned, with numerous cracked panes, and the straw on the floor badly in need of changing. Yet the state of it was far from being as bad as that of many so-called Courts of Justice that Roger had seen during the worst days of the Revolution. The walls of the room were not lined with pipe-smoking, spitting, out-at-elbows National Guards, or the public benches packed with an evil mob of both sexes which, at the first sign of the judges inclining to show mercy, would intimidate them by howling for the blood of the accused.
Here there were no more than half a dozen casual spectators: Tardieu with his men, Giffens, a handful of depressed-looking advocates in the well of the Court and three magistrates, who were sitting at a table on a dais. On the wall behind it the Axes and Fasces surmounted by the Cap of Liberty had long since replaced the Royal Arms of France.
As Roger was put in the dock he swiftly scrutinized the three magistrates seated on the dais. The only thing they had in common was that they all wore tricolour sashes. The Chairman was a tall, lean individual. He had a bulging forehead, was wearing steel-rimmed spectacles, a shiny suit of dark-green cloth and looked as if he might be a lawyer. On his right sat a heavy-jowled, fattish man with black, curly hair. He wore a bright-blue coat, a big horseshoe pin was stuck in his cravat and he was sucking a straw, so Roger put him down as probably a farmer or a horse-dealer. The third man was small, with apple-red cheeks, a snub nose, and was dressed very neatly in a snuff-coloured suit with silver buttons. His appearance suggested the well-to-do bourgeois merchant who had succeeded in living through the Terror.
One of the advocates, who was evidently the Public Prosecutor, got to his feet. He was elderly, thin-faced and had a rat-trap mouth. After taking a pinch of snuff, most of which fell upon his already snuff-stained gown, he opened the trial. In a tired, indifferent voice, he stated that he did not think the present matter would occupy the Court for long, as there was ample evidence to show that the prisoner was an En
glish spy. He then called Tardieu.
Speaking quickly and using many gestures, the Coastguard Lieutenant gave an account of the happenings of the previous night. From time to time he ran a finger down his long nose and shot a malicious sideways glance at Roger, who rightly assumed that Tardieu, having been fooled into giving his prisoner the benefit of the doubt to start with, and a night in a comfortable bed, was now working off his spite. But he said nothing that Roger had not expected him to say.
The next witness was one of the men who had acted as escort from the farm. It transpired that he belonged to the second patrol and had been among the first to reach the two men whom Roger had wounded. In a gruff voice he described the injuries they had sustained and how Roger had taken refuge in the sea, but had been compelled, on account of the cold, to come up out of it and surrender.
Roger had been offered no legal aid; so he asked permission of the Court to cross-examine the witness, and it was granted. In reply to his questions, the man at once agreed that there had been no moon and that none of his party was carrying lanterns. Then, after some pressing, he admitted that it had been very dark and the starlight so feeble that an approaching figure could not be seen at more than a few paces.
The Prosecutor then informed the Court that the next witness would be a seaman of the British Navy. He was a member of the crew of the sloop-of-war that had brought Roger to France and had been captured when landing him from a boat. He would swear to having known the prisoner for a number of years and that he was an Englishman, the son of Admiral Sir Brook.
Giffens was put in the box and, by a series of little more than nods and grunts, confirmed, through an interpreter, the Prosecutor's statement. But Tardieu was not satisfied by this and took it on himself to prime the Prosecutor with further questions. This resulted in Giffens repeating, in dribs and drabs but fully, the statement he had volunteered so readily to the Coastguards early that morning. Roger could see that he had succeeded in scaring the man to a point at which he gave these details only with reluctance, but he could not prevent particulars of himself, his home at Lymington, his visits to Walhampton and his marriage to Amanda from coming out.
When they had finished with Giffens, Roger cross-examined him and, greatly to his relief, found that the seaman had made up his mind to hedge. He agreed almost eagerly that before Roger boarded the sloop at Lymington he had not seen him for nearly seven years, so might perhaps have mistaken him for the Admiral's son.
Roger then made a bold attempt to trade on Giffen's fears by saying, ' As you were at Walhampton before the war with France began, you surely must remember a French gentleman who came there several times with the Admiral: a cousin of young Mr. Brook, who strongly resembled him? '
Giffens gave him a startled look, shook his head, then, thinking better of it, mumbled something that the interpreter translated as, 'Well, perhaps. There were a lot of Frenchmen who were refugees from the Revolution living in Lymington in those days, and some of them visited at Walhampton. But I couldn't be certain.'
Although that left the matter in doubt, Roger felt, as Giffens stood down, that he had scored a valuable point and when the Prosecutor began to question him he gave his story with quiet confidence.
It was that General Bonaparte, knowing that he had spent several years of his boyhood in England and was bilingual, so could pass as an Englishman, had sent him there to report on the measures being taken by the English to resist invasion.
He had been landed on the Kentish coast by smugglers, and had spent the past six weeks staying in small towns on the Kent, Sussex and Hampshire coasts, working his way westward until he reached Lymington.
There, four nights ago, at an inn, he had got into conversation with a naval Lieutenant. This young man had been drinking heavily and, after they had talked for some while, confided that owing to gambling he had got himself into serious money troubles. The Lieutenant had also mentioned earlier that he was under orders to sail his sloop up to Dover as soon as the weather permitted.
Having covered the territory assigned him by his General, Roger was anxious to get back to France. Normally he would have had to wait until he could get in touch with another gang of smugglers working from the Hampshire coast; but the sloop had seemed too good an opportunity to miss if he could persuade the Lieutenant to put him over. He had, therefore, told the Lieutenant that he was a Government agent seeking a passage and asked his help. The officer had, at first, demurred, on the grounds that he would be acting without orders and might risk his ship if he stood in too near the French coast; but Roger had played on his anxiety about money and had overcome his scruples by offering him the considerable sum he would have had to pay a smuggler to run him across.
The Prosecutor then asked him a number of questions about his parentage, upbringing in England, later career in France, recent stay in England and whether, during it, he had been to Grove Place to see any of his English relatives.
Assuming the last question to be a trap, Roger replied promptly, 'Certainly not. With a war in progress how could I possibly have explained my presence in England to them? They would have felt compelled to hand me over to the authorities. On the contrary, while I was in Lymington I was in constant fear of being recognized; so I spent nearly all the two days I was there in my room at the inn. I would never have gone to Lymington at all had it not been a part of my instructions to report on the shipping in the harbour.'
To all the other questions he gave the stock answers which were now second nature to him, adding for full measure references to many of his well-known acquaintances in Paris and descriptions of some of the outstanding scenes he had witnessed there during the Revolution. Since he spoke without the slightest hesitation and in French that was beyond reproach, he felt confident by the time he had finished that he had convinced the Court that he was a Frenchman. Yet one matter arose out of his examination that caused him a few nasty moments.
From beneath the table at which he was sitting, the Prosecutor produced the little valise that Roger had brought ashore, and to which he had clung during his flight along the beach until he was compelled to drop it on meeting the two men who had attacked him. Opening the valise, the Prosecutor took from it a small squat bottle and handed it up to the magistrates for them to look at.
As Roger recognized it his heart gave a thump. The bottle bore a handwritten label, 'Grove Place; Cherry Brandy.' Old Jim Button made a couple of gallons or so of the cordial every year with the morello cherries that grew in the garden. Knowing Roger's fondness for this home-made tipple he had slipped a bottle of it into the valise just before Roger's departure.
' You have told the Court,' said the Prosecutor, ' that while in Lymington you deliberately kept away from Grove Place. How comes it, then, that you had in your valise a bottle of this liqueur which has the name of the Admiral's residence upon it? '
'1 bought it,' Roger declared, after only a second's hesitation. CI saw it with other bottles in the coffee room of the inn, and chose it as most suitable to keep me warm during my crossing.'
The fat magistrate in the bright-blue coat was examining the bottle and he said, 'The handwritten label shows this to be a private brew. Inns buy their liquor from merchants, not from amateur cordial makers.'
'It may have been stolen,' Roger countered. 'Perhaps one of the servants at the house sold it for half its value to the innkeeper.'
The magistrate shook his head. 'Such things happen, but not in this case. You say you saw it in the coffee room of the inn. No landlord who had bought stolen goods would be such a fool as to display them publicly in his coffee room. I'm an innkeeper myself and can vouch for that.'
' Then you had best drink it, Citizen,' Roger quipped. ' You will find it very good.'
His sally raised a titter, but next moment he could have bitten off his tongue. The Chairman of the Bench was on him in a flash. ' This bottle is unopened, yet you admit to knowledge of its contents. Therefore, you must be well acquainted with the cordial and must have dru
nk it recently. I regard this as evidence that you did visit Grove Place and were given the bottle there.'
A slight shiver ran through Roger. The courtroom was warmed only by a charcoal brazier; so it was distinctly chilly, and by this time his having had nothing to eat since the previous night was beginning to tell upon him. With an effort, he shrugged his shoulders and said:
'Citizen Chairman, you err in counting that against me. I recommended the cordial on the grounds that I recall enjoying it when as a youth I lived at Grove Place and I saw no reason to suppose that its quality had deteriorated.'
A frown momentarily wrinkled the bulging forehead of the Chairman, then he said, ' We will leave that question for the moment and enquire further into an outstanding feature of the case. You have stated that your recent visit to England was as an agent for General Bonaparte, and that having completed your mission you fooled the Captain of a British sloop into bringing you back to France. Evidence has been given that you were landed safely and covered near half a kilometre along the shore away from the boat before you were challenged by two members of the second patrol. At that distance, had you declared yourself in what you assert to be your true colours, the members of the boat's crew could not have shot you down or even heard you. Yet, instead of hailing your compatriots with joy, you shot one of them with a pistol and smashed the butt of it into the face of the other. If you are, as you claim, a Colonel in the Army of France, what possible explanation have you to offer for attacking two members of our Coastguard Service? '
This was the big fence and, pulling himself together, Roger took it to the best of his ability. Pointing to the Coastguard who had been among the first to arrive on the scene of the affray, he said, ' That man has told the Court that at the time of the occurrence the beach was lit only by starlight so faint that it was impossible to see an approaching figure at more than a few yards' distance. The men who attacked me were running full tilt towards me and I towards them. In such circumstances a yard can be covered in less than a second. They were upon me before I had even the time to shout. One of them had a sabre raised above his head with intent to cleave my head from scalp to chin. Instinctively, as the only chance of saving my life, I fired upon him. As he fell his companion charged at me. I barely escaped his thrust, and in swerving struck wildly at him with the hand that held my pistol. It caught him in the face and he went down.'
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