'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 English spy. He then called Tardieu.