The Vicar seemed to be childishly delighted and accepted this great honour. ‘I will most certainly go as your second,’ he replied. ‘But you have so imbued me with the fire to destroy a villain that I could wish the pleasure were mine.’ Here Bully Foulkes so far forgot the respect due to this wolf in sheep’s clothing that he clapped him on the back saying that he was glad to meet such a sly dog.
Curiously enough the parson, also laughing gaily, replied in French: ‘L’eau qui dort est pire que celle qui court. A good proverb, sir, and one I flatter myself I have always lived up to. For indeed a calm exterior is more to be feared than a Bombastes Furioso —’ Then seeing that the Captain’s laughter had somewhat abated, he said: ‘We must not let our sense of humour blunt our purpose, for our swords are as sharp as our sense of duty.’
The Vicar’s servant also appeared to have a sense of duty, for upon that instant there was a respectful tap upon the door, and bidden to come in he stood humbly pulling forelock, though only his master saw the excited quivering of his jigger-gaff.
‘Beg pardon, sir, for interruptin’, but you asked me to remind you at odd moments about Mrs. Wooley’s complaint.’
‘Oh, dear me, yes,’ replied the Vicar. ‘I had indeed forgotten. I shall start almost at once. Thank you, my good man.’ He turned to the Captain and said with what might have been a wink: ‘A poor old woman is in need of comfort. You understand.’
The Captain understood. ‘Zounds,’ he thought, ‘the fellow’s a marvel. He has the wit to keep it up in front of his servant.’
‘Well, sir,’ went on the servant, ‘if you’re a-goin’ out in all this dark, I’d best come with you with a lantern.’
The parson shook his head. They would take the pitch-torches, he said, and bade his servant go to rest. But the servant persisted, ‘I never rest when you’re out. Are you sure you’ll be all right? There’s a storm comin’ up. I knows it by them curlews.’
The Vicar did not appear to have heard this last remark, for with a silken handkerchief he bent down and flicked one buckled shoe. ‘Dear me,’ he said. ‘Too bad. Mud.’
The Captain was amused to see that the servant’s face was a study in injured innocence, and that as they left him he was shaking his head and reproving himself with ‘Tch, tch, Mud. What a pity. Mud.’
As they crossed the bridge on to the sea-wall, a vivid flash of lightning lit up the sea which, as the thunder rolled away, made the darkness denser. Each with a flaming pitch-torch held high, they made their way, casting fantastic shadows on the narrow, grassy track, one side a sheer stone drop, curving away below into the sea, which now lashed angrily against it. The track widened about a look-out hut and here the parson stopped. ‘This is the spot,’ he whispered, and stuck the handle of his torch into the wind-drift sand. ‘Do you wait here in this shelter, for I am pledged to go alone and tell the Scarecrow that all is well and this is not a trap.’
The Captain nodded his assent and slipped between the hut and the wall’s edge, whilst Doctor Syn vanished into the darkness of the other side.
What Captain Foulkes now felt was perhaps the culmination of all that he had experienced in his mind since that night at Crockford’s when he had first met this Doctor Syn. Since that meeting it seemed that he was no longer in command of his own destiny and that he was caught in the toils of some vast spider’s web, only subconsciously aware that this black figure was the centre of a patterned weaving, knowing every quiver of it and had almost hypnotized him. So he waited, struggling in his mind, like a stinging wasp, for the right moment to escape the outer fringes by force.
He stood above the sea, watching the fire-play of November lightning round the giant groups of brooding cloud that hovered till some signal should let drive the full fury of their prophetic wrath. Then suddenly, as if they had received a sign, the clouds began to move, and a voice behind him, harsh and imperious, rang out: ‘The Scarecrow waits for no man, Captain Foulkes.’
Foulkes turned and saw what had been described to him a hundred times, though face to face, a hundred times more terrifying, as in this weird setting of the lofty wall, hanging between the clouds and sea, the pitch-torch flickered its unholy light up the gaunt figure to the horrors of its grim, carved face. Even as he watched, It spoke to him again: ‘L’Épouvantail — at your service, Monsieur Barsard.’
The Captain stood silent, his mind too paralyzed to adjust itself to what this strange creature had just said. Then he was asked a question. ‘What is your business with me, citizen, Spy?’ He had no answer. Forcing his frozen intellect to explain how this man knew his secret, he remembered the missing wallet — the highwayman — could he be…? He had heard rumours… But before he had time to reply, as though in answer to his thoughts, the Scarecrow, with a contemptuous gesture, threw something towards him. It landed at his feet — a flat, dark object — his wallet.
He bent eagerly to pick it up, and thumbed it furtively. The paper was still there. Yet this man must have read it; else how could he have known?
Again the Scarecrow answered for him: ‘Yes, I had it from the highwayman. He has sensitive fingers, but cannot read French, though a name is a name to all men, and he is my friend. Doctor Syn told him that you wished it back. The paper is still there, though you will have no further use for it. I do not work through intermediaries. You thought to put a proposition to me, but I did not like your method of approach. To hide a black project behind a bragging wager to kill a wanted man is unworthy of a brilliant swordsman.
‘So the proposal that you thought to make has been attended to, for I do not accept terms — I make them. And I made them to Citizen Robespierre. For though the paper enlightened me abotu a certain Monsieur Barsard, my organization is so complete that I already knew of the scheme he wished to put to me. I went to the head of your organization and he told me what fantastic plans he had. It was simple, because I had already decided to play my part in them.’
Dimly the Captain grasped one thing. It sounded as though this giant smuggler was on their side, and yet he told himself he must be careful. He had made the mistake of approaching him as Foulkes instead of Barsard. But though Barsard’s plans had come to naught, Foulkes still had a card to play, and this he would make sure of. But where was the parson? Why had he not returned? He looked about him, peering into the darkness, anxiously.
Once more he got a reply to his unspoken question.
‘The parson will be with you, Captain, soon. I will bring him back when we are ready, but we still have a few points to clear up.’
Assurance of the parson’s return and what it meant to him restored a little of the Captain’s confidence and he said with some spirit: ‘Since Citizen L’Épouvantail has taken the business out of the hands of Citizen Barsard, I am at a loss to know what other points are left.’
‘There is the vital point of making England revolutionary, and it would interest me to know why Captain Foulkes, a leader of the London dandies, should interest himself in this. Was it perhaps that unfortunate affair that sent you out of the country all those years ago? But after all, that’s no affair of mine. One man’s reason is as good as another’s, and Robespierre too has a reason. He supplied me with six of his best agents. All good spies and desperate characters. I had their full dossiers. Then as I had to make decisions quickly, he generously provided me with yet another — a most enlightening document, taking one from England and a military scandal in 1774 to the Americas — the Caribbean Sea — then back to France — to England and the fashionable clubs with a reputation as a swordsman, and in frequent crossings of the Channel, a reputation as a secret political agent and a denouncer of fostered friends. So, Captain Foulkes, seeing that you and I know so much about this Monsieur Barsard, it will not be difficult for us to keep all seven spies of Robespierre in their place, and if you and I are to work and fight together, I realize that with all that to your credit, I must offer you an equal guarantee.’