At this she looked up at him, a smile withering upon her hard drawn face.
"That's very well said," she cried, "but there are holes in your argument. Let me remind you that we may find what is missing before the sun rises. Do you think that we shall sit here idly and wait your pleasure? Indeed, you don't, for you are not such a fool."
"I shall risk any thing you may do," said Messenger; "it's the one risk I must take. Otherwise I have rather the best case, and can afford to laugh at your efforts."
He had grown bolder as he felt her wavering and saw that she made no movement as though she would touch the gong at her side. But the Spaniards were still pressing upon the grating, and at this last speech of his he could hear the murmuring of their whispering. As for the woman, his words turned her from her quieter mood to one of ostensible anger.
"I would not begin to laugh yet!" she snapped; "there is time for that. I have done with you now, to-morrow I shall know my mind. But don't forget that I have offered you your life and that of the boy——"
"Or that I claim the lives of the others," said Messenger, in a burst of lofty generosity which fell in exactly with the part he was acting.
"You claim!' she answered, her anger growing, "you claim! ha! I shall be compelled to teach you a lesson! As I live, you are the first man that has dared to argue with me in my own house——"
"Let us hope I shall not be the last," exclaimed Messenger, who saw that he had won the deal; "argument, madame, is the doorstep to reason."
"You are impertinent," she said, rising. "Next time we meet I shall take means to bring you to better behaviour!"
When she had said this, she tapped twice upon the table with her fan; then withdrew herself behind a panel which flew open at the touch of her hand, and was gone from sight. She had flaunted away in a burst of anger, and her exit had been in some part melodramatic; but the man for whose benefit the performance was designed stood quite unmoved. He thought only that he had taken her measure, and found it rather shallow. For her threats he did not care a snap of the fingers; and, to his infinite satisfaction, he foresaw the moment when the end of the bargaining should restore to him all that yesterday seemed lost. With the woman's aid he would reach South America in the faces of all the British warships that floated; with her assistance he would put his heel on the schemes for his capture and grind them to shreds. A dream of success floated up from the thought and held him motionless. The first ambition which had prompted the great flight from London was potent again with all its aims and possibility. He could have hugged himself at the luck which sent him to such a shore and such a haven.
He was aroused from the contemplation of these visions by the sudden discovery that a servant stood at his side—a waiting-man, dressed sombrely in black, but with knee-breeches, and silver buckles upon his shoes. Whence the fellow had come he did not know; but he looked at the gratings, where he had seen the eyes of many men a few minutes before, and did not now behold a single face. The crowd of janissaries had vanished as a picture from a lantern-cloth; the room beyond was in utter darkness; only the one servant waited for him, and appeared to be impatient that he should go. Another man might have contemplated, under such circumstances, a quick dash for liberty; but he was too wise. Though he could not see them, he felt that many eyes watched him; that he had but to raise a hand, and he would be struck down as he stood.
Convinced of this, he followed the lackey from the room, and, passing to a narrow stair case, he mounted many flights of stairs, going upward, upward, until at last the man opened a heavy wooden door, which swung upon valves, and intimated to him that this was his apartment. As he stepped into the room the door was locked behind him; but a cheery greeting reassured him, and he made the welcome discovery that he was caged with the others of his party, and that they had looked upon him as dead.
XXIII. A WARNING IN THE FLESH
The first to speak was Burke.
"Hello, my dandelion!" said he; "so you've riz up, after all? Wal, you always were a shiner! How did you leave the she-devil in the black toggery? Did she ask particler after my health?"
"I'm sorry to say she forgot to mention you," replied the Prince; "she was too busy debating me. Where's the nigger?"
"Here, sah," cried Joe from a dark corner of the place; "quite flat, sah, or fall out of the window, sah. Slap-up fine thing in windows; no trouble to open him; you go long way, heels up, sah, if you don't mind your eye!"
The light was very dim, but his meaning was plain, for the room in which the four had been shut was at the top of one of the towers of the castle, and the whole of its right-hand side was open to the air, there being a parapet not more than six inches high to prevent any man stepping from the prison and going straight down to the flags of the court a hundred feet below. Beyond this startling eccentricity of casement the place had nothing uncommon, being built with thick stone walls and heavy beams above; but there was a table in the centre of it, upon which some bottles of common Spanish wine, together with a supper of meat and bread, were set; and the floor was strewn with rushes.
"Well," said Messenger, after he had looked all round, "this wouldn't be the place to give a small and early in—eh, Burke? Not quite the 'Metropole', is it? What's the wine like?"
"Forked lightning coloured up with sulphur!" said Burke. "I took a sup jess now—not more than a quart—and it only wanted a bit of string to spin me!"
"And, Hal," continued the Prince, turning to Fisher, who sat upon a bench looking with infinite disgust at the fatty meat upon the table, "you don't tell me how you fared!"
"I didn't fare at all," said Fisher. "The man brought me up here and shut me in; that was the beginning and the end of it."
"I wish to Heaven it was the end of it!" cried the other. "Do you know what she wants, Burke? She asks for the whole of the cash in return for a free passage for the four of us. I call that modest!"
When Burke heard this, he sat up wonderingly.
"All the stuff?" he asked.
"Every sovereign of it!" said Messenger.
"I'd burn her old body to blazes before I'd give her ninepence!" said Burke. "What ken she do?"
"She may do many things. To begin with, she might poison us——"
"Blind me, I never thought of that when I swabbed up the vitriol! What did you say?"
"I said that I would give her one-third in return for her help."
"You did foolish! What is there ez'll prevent her banking the cash and then stretching you?"
"A little something which occurred to me before I made the offer. If she accepts my conditions, I shall send two of you to Ferrol to look for Kenner; and, wanting him, to do his business."
"That's right along cute! Did it occur to you, belike, that there was a way out of this hole?"
"Just as much a way out as there would be from Bow Street if the pair of us were there now."
"She came to know of the business from the papers, I'm supposing?"
"Exactly. The mate of the Admiral was picked up, as I thought, and half the police in Europe are tracking us."
"Wal, I reckon I saw it from the first. You must have been blind to let the man go!"
"If I'd have done any thing else, the crew would have turned. It was the best thing possible."
"Maybe; but if it was me ez had drawn a bead on him, he'd be among the martyrs now. Do you think the old girl will take the third?"
"I'll tell you better in the morning. I'm full of sleep now; and I'm