“Oh no,” somewhat loftily and quite unsuspicious of irony. “The passages were narrow, of course; but we had allowed for that in our organisation. Organisation and the People, see you--”
“Yes,” replied Morot. “Organisation and the People.” Like Lerac, he stopped short, apparently lost in the contemplation of the vast possibilities presented to his mental vision by the mere thought of such a combination.
“Well!” exclaimed the butcher energetically, “I must move on. I have meetings. I merely wished to hear from you that all was right--that no one was caught.”
He was bubbling over with excitement and the sense of his own huge importance.
The Citizen Morot raised his secretive eyes.
“Good-night,” he said, with an insolence far too fine for the butcher's comprehension.
“Well--good-night. We may congratulate ourselves, I think, Citizen!”
“I congratulate you,” said Morot. “Good-night.”
It is probable that, had Lerac looked back, there would have been murder done in the small room behind the tobacco-shop. But the contemptuous smile soon vanished from the face of the Citizen Morot. No smile lingered there long. It was not built upon smiling lines at all.
Then he took up his letters. There were only two of them: one bearing the postmark of a small town in Morbihan, the other hailing from England.
He replaced the first in his pocket unread; the second he opened. It was written in French.
“There are difficulties,” it said. “Can you come to me? Cross from Cherbourg to Southampton--train from thence to this place, and ask for Signor Bruno, an Italian refugee, living at the house of Mrs. Potter, a _ci-devant_ laundress.”
The Citizen Morot rubbed his chin thoughtfully with the back of his hand, making a sharp, grating sound.
“That old man,” he said, “is getting past his work. He is losing nerve; and nerve is a thing that we cannot afford to lose.”
“Ah!” he exclaimed suddenly; “St. Mary Western. He is there--how very strange. What a singular coincidence!”
He fell into a reverie with the letter before him.
“Carew is dead--but still I can manage it. Perhaps it is just as well that he is dead. I was always afraid of Carew.”
Then he wrote a letter, which he addressed to “Signor Bruno, care of Mrs. Potter, St. Mary Western, Dorset.”