“He wears very gaudy waistcoats,” interrupted Delaroche.

André resisted the urge to shove the other man’s hat straight down over his dour face. “Good God, man. If you arrested every man in Paris with the temerity to sport a gaudy waistcoat, there would be more people in the prisons than on the street. We’d have to declare a national emergency.”

Delaroche glowered from under the brim of his highly unfashionable hat. “This is not a laughing matter, Jaouen.”

Of course not. It didn’t involve thumbscrews. The only diversions Delaroche found amusing were those that involved the crunching of cartilage.

“Naturally not,” said André grimly. “Just think of the repercussions. The English would start shipping in waistcoats to our coastline, just to undermine our ordinances. The Austrians would probably contribute gold trim. You would find underground groups of waistcoat fanciers congregating in basements. And why? All because one elderly artist has a penchant for scarlet and gold.”

Delaroche fanned out the tails of his own black coat, like a bird ruffling its feathers. “Scarlet and gold are royal colors. You can’t deny that, Jaouen.”

Neither would the First Consul, who had increasingly adopted those colors for his own use, along with the jewels, the throne, and several palaces. There was nothing like collecting all the accoutrements.

“All the more reason to appropriate those shades for our virtuous citizenry, wouldn’t you agree? I doubt Daubier was making a political statement when he chose his waistcoat, any more than you were in wearing that hat.”

“There is nothing wrong with my hat.”

André leaned comfortably back against the seat. “I never said there was.”

Delaroche had been devilishly touchy about his attire ever since being the recipient of a series of mocking notes on the topic from none other than Sir Percy Blakeney. He had claimed not to mind, but the mockery had obviously left its mark, if not any actual improvement in his appearance.

“You sound like that damned, elusive Pimpernel,” snapped Delaroche.

André laughed. “Him? His accent is pure Versailles.” He exaggerated his own Breton burr, knowing that it made his point for him better than any number of testimonials. His own Revolutionary credentials were impeccable and Delaroche knew it. “Besides, he’s been out of the business for some time. You’re behind the times, Gaston. Isn’t there another flower making trouble these days?” He snapped his fingers as though trying to recall. “Something pink?”

“The Carnation,” snapped Delaroche. “The Pink Carnation.”

“Ah, yes. I forgot that you had personal experience of the creature.”

Delaroche donned his most sinister expression, the one that made him look like someone had just pinched his nose. “I will find him.”

“I’m sure you will,” said André soothingly. “Eventually.”

“Do you mock?” Delaroche demanded.

Always a dangerous question. If one had to ask, the answer was probably yes.

“No. I marvel,” said André. “I don’t see the point of fainting in terror at a pile of petals.” André turned to the window as the ancient carriage lurched to a halt that threatened to detach the cab from the wheels. “Ah, look. We seem to have arrived.”

Two guards stood outside a narrow structure. They were both, André noticed, employees of the Prefecture, rather than Fouché’s personal staff. Fouché had a long-standing rivalry with Dubois, the Prefect of Paris. This, as a matter concerning Paris, would be technically in Dubois’s purview. More importantly, he had gotten there first.

André looked back at Delaroche. Now he understood his colleague’s eagerness to fetch him. As second in command at the Prefecture, André had automatic access. Delaroche, on the other hand, would not. At least, not without André.

Seeing André at the window, one of the guards hurried forward and yanked open the door for him, nearly capsizing the carriage in his eagerness to wrench open to the door.

“Monsieur Jaouen! Thank goodness you’re here, sir.”

“What happened?” asked André without preamble. He made for the house without looking to see if Delaroche followed.

“It was Cadoudal!” said the first guard excitably. “He had Louis Picot here with him posing as manservant. We recognized him from his picture in the Bulletin. We followed him back here.”

The picture was becoming clear. “But Picot gave the alarm?”

“Picot gave the alarm,” confirmed the second guard morosely. “He realized someone was behind him”—a dirty look at his comrade, who hung his head and looked at his feet—“and began bawling out the first verse of the ‘Marseillaise.’ ”

“Their signal,” guessed André.

The second guard nodded. “By the time we made it up here, Cadoudal was gone.”

“Has anyone searched upstairs?”

The first guard shook his head. “We were instructed to wait for you.”

André noticed them studiously not looking at Delaroche. So he had tried to get in, had he?

“Well done,” he told them, and watched the first guard preen like a puppy. “You’ve been very helpful. Where can I find the room?”

“Straight up,” said the first guard. “The second floor, to the right.”

The building was small but well-maintained, the stairs swept clean, with cheap but fresh paper on the wall, no different from hundreds of similar boardinghouses across Paris. André took the stairs carefully, looking about him as he went. Contrary to popular opinion, a clever spy chose not a dark bolt-hole, but a tidy lodging house, a place where supper was served on time and the general population of low-level clerks was such as to not call the attention of the law. A man might hide indefinitely in such a situation.

Or almost indefinitely.

Cadoudal’s lodging was innocuous enough in itself—one large room with a smaller beyond for the manservant, a washstand behind a screen, a camp bed in one corner with furniture arranged as a sitting area in the other. From the look of the room, Cadoudal had been prepared for early flight. On the table, a partly eaten meat pie and a hunk of cheese sat next to a half-empty glass and a carafe of vin ordinaire (where Cadoudal was, there was always food), and clothing had been scattered across the floor as though a portmanteau had broken in flight, but the room was curiously bare of either books or papers.

There would be a thorough examination made, ravaging the mattress, the walls, the floorboards, but André doubted anything more would be found; canny old campaigner that he was, Cadoudal must have kept his more sensitive documents packed in one place, ready to go at the first strains of “La Marseillaise.”

André bent over the table. Some papers had fallen to the floor, wedged between the chair and the wall. One was a page from a Bulletin, the same bulletins that were delivered to him at the Prefecture, from which the master bulletin, the one that went officially to the First Consul and unofficially to Fouché, were prepared. There was only one problem. This Bulletin was dated as of the following week.

André held it wordlessly out to Delaroche.

Delaroche ignored it. He was rooting beneath the meat pie, like a particularly grubby sort of animal. A badger? André had always lived in towns. Natural philosophy might be part of a gentleman’s education, but he was weak on wildlife.

“Ha!” said Delaroche, holding something aloft.

At first glance, the paper hardly merited his enthusiasm. Taking it by two fingers, André turned it gingerly, first this way, then that. It was a piece of a letter, one that had been deliberately been folded, ripped, and then folded and ripped again.

“. . . with the Prince in Paris . . . ,” the fragment began.

“Prince,” said André. “A code name?”

“Or no code at all,” said Delaroche.

He sounded distinctly smug. Fouché had been warning the First Consul of a Royalist threat for months, a tune to which the First Consul had consistently turned a deaf ear. A Bourbon on the loose in Paris would make even Bonaparte sit up and take notice.

“You believe we have a prince of the blood on the loose in Paris.”

Delaroche’s lips twisted derisively. “So it would seem to say.”

“Yes, seem,” agreed André. All right, if they were going to play that game. “The Comte d’Artois would be the logical choice.”

While it was the dead King’s other brother, the Comte de Provence, who had been crowned Louis XVIII, the younger brother, Artois, had been the more active in fomenting schemes for the reinstatement of the Bourbon line.

“Ha!” said Delaroche. “The Comte d’Artois is too careful of his own skin to come gadding off to Paris. According to my sources, he is very happily ensconced on South Audley Street”—Delaroche pronounced the foreign name with distaste—“entertaining the heir to the English throne at games of whist.”

“Likely,” agreed André. “Highly likely. My sources also place the count in London. I doubt Provence would come himself. He’s too precious for them to risk. Unless . . .”

“Unless?”

“Unless Artois wanted to make the way clear for himself by compromising Provence.”

Despite the fact that it came from André, the idea of a double cross appealed to Delaroche. Reluctantly, he dismissed the idea. “No. They band together, these royal spawn. It must be someone else. Not Artois. Not Provence. But who?”

Why did André have a feeling he was going to tell him?

“The count has a son,” pronounced Delaroche, as though he had just done Descartes one better.

“Two of them, in fact,” supplied André. It wasn’t exactly privileged information.