The Long Night - Stanley Weyman (free novel 24 .txt) 📗

confident. But no one took on himself to gainsay him in his particular province, the superintendence of the guard; and though Baudichon sighed and Petitot shook his head, the word was left with him. "Is that all, Messer Fabri?" he asked.

"Yes, if we lay it to heart."

"But I want to know," Baudichon struck in, puffing pompously, "what is to be done about--Basterga."

"Basterga? To be sure I was forgetting him," Fabri answered. "What is to be done? What do you say, Messer Blondel? What are we to do about him?"

"I will tell you if you will tell me what the point is that touches him. You forget, Messer Syndic"--with a somewhat sickly smile--"that I was asleep."

"The letter," Fabri replied, returning to it, "touches him seriously. It asserts that a person of that name is here in the Grand Duke's interest, that he is in the secret of these plots, and that we should do well to expel him, if we do not seize and imprison him."

"And you want to know----"

"I want to know," Baudichon answered, rolling in his chair as was his habit when delivering himself, "what you know of him, Messer Blondel."

Blondel turned rudely on him, perhaps to hide a slight ebb of colour from his cheeks. "What I know?" he said.

"Ay, ay."

"No more than you know!"

"But," Petitot retorted in his dry, thin voice, "it was you, Messer Blondel, not Messer Baudichon, who gave him permission to reside in the town."

"And I want to know," Baudichon chimed in remorselessly, "what credentials he had. That is what I want to know!"

"Credentials? Oh, something formal! I don't know what," Blondel replied rudely. He looked to the secretary who sat at the foot of the table. "Do you know?" he asked.

"No, Messer Syndic," the man replied. "I remember that a licence was granted to him in the name of Caesar Basterga, graduate of Padua; and doubtless--for licences to reside are not granted without such--he had letters, but I do not recall from whom. They would be returned to him with the licence."

"And that is all," Petitot said, his long nose drooping, his inquisitive eyes looking over his glasses, "that you know about him, Messer Blondel?"

Did they know anything, and, if so, what did they know? Blondel hesitated. This persistence, this continual harping on one point, began to alarm him. But he carried it bravely. "Do you mean as to his convictions?" he asked with a sneer.

"No, I mean at all!"

"I want to know," Baudichon added--the parrot phrase began to carry to Blondel's ears the note of fate--"what you know about him."

This time a pause betrayed Blondel's hesitation. Should he admit that he had been to Basterga's lodging; or dared he deny a fact that might imply an intimacy greater than he had acknowledged? A faint perspiration rose on his brow as he decided that he dare not. "I know that he lives in a house in the Corraterie," he answered, "a house beside the Porte Tertasse, and that he is a scholar--I believe of some repute. I know so much," he continued boldly, "because he wrote to thank me for the licence, and, by way of acknowledgment, invited me to visit his lodging to view a rare manuscript of the Scriptures. I did so, and remained a few minutes with him. That is all I know of him. I suppose," with a grim look at Baudichon and the Inquisitor, who had exchanged meaning glances, "it is not alleged that I am in the plot with him? Or that he has confided to me the Grand Duke's plans?"

Fabri laughed heartily at the notion, and the laugh, which was echoed by four-fifths of those at the table, cleared the air. Petitot, it is true, limited himself to a smile, and Baudichon shrugged his shoulders. But for the moment the challenge silenced them. The game passed to Blondel's hands, and his spirits rose. "If M. Baudichon wants to know more about him," he said contemptuously, "I dare say that the information can be obtained."

"The point is," Fabri answered, "what are we to do?"

"As to--what?"

"As to expelling him or seizing him."

"Oh!" The exclamation fell from Blondel's lips before he could stay it. He saw what was coming, and the dilemma in which he was to be placed.

"We have the letter before us," the First Syndic continued, "and apart from it, we know nothing for this person or against him." He looked round the table and met assenting glances. "I think, therefore, that it will be well, to leave it to Messer Blondel. He is responsible for the safety of the city, and it should be for him to say what is to be done."

"Yes, yes," several voices agreed. "Leave it to Messer Blondel."

"You assent to that, Messer Baudichon?"

"I suppose so," the councillor muttered reluctantly.

"Very good," said Fabri. "Then, Messer Blondel, it remains with you to say what is to be done."

The Fourth Syndic hesitated, and with reason; had Baudichon, had the Inquisitor known the whole, they could hardly have placed him in a more awkward dilemma. If he took the course that prudence in his own interests dictated, and shielded Basterga, his action might lay him open to future criticism. If, on the other hand, he gave the word to expel or seize him, he broke at once and for ever with the man who held his last chance of life in the hollow of his hand.

And yet, if he dared adopt the latter course, if he dared give the word to seize, there was a chance, and a good chance, that he would find the _remedium_ in the casket; for with a little arrangement Basterga might be arrested out of doors, or be allured to a particular place and there be set upon. But in that way lay risk; a risk that chilled the current of the Syndic's blood. There was the chance that the attempt might fail; the chance that Basterga might escape; the chance that he might have the _remedium_ about him--and destroy it; the chance that he might have hidden it. There were so many chances, in a word, that the Syndic's heart stood still as he enumerated them, and pictured the crash of his last hope of life.

He could not face the risk. He could not. Though duty, though courage dictated the venture, craven fear--fear for the loss of the new-born hope that for a week had buoyed him up--carried it. Hurriedly at last, as if he feared that he might change his mind, he pronounced his decision.

"I doubt the wisdom of touching him," he said. "To seize him if he be guilty proclaims our knowledge of the plot; it will be laid aside, and another, of which we may not be informed, will be hatched. But let him be watched, and it will be hard if with the knowledge we have we cannot do something more than frustrate his scheme."

After an interval of silence, "Well," Fabri said, drawing a deep breath and looking round, "I believe you are right. What do you say, Messer Baudichon?"

"Messer Blondel knows the man," Baudichon answered drily. "He is, therefore, the best judge."

Blondel reddened. "I see you are determined to lay the responsibility on me," he cried.

"The responsibility is on you already!" Petitot retorted. "You have decided. I trust it may turn out as you expect."

"And as you do not expect!"

"No; but you see"--and again the Inquisitor looked over his glasses--"you know the man, have been to his lodging, have conversed with him, and are the best judge what he is! I have had naught to do with him. By the way," he turned to Fabri, "he is at Mere Royaume's, is he not? Is there not a Spaniard of the name of Grio lodging there?"

Blondel did not answer and the secretary looked up from his register. "An old soldier, Messer Petitot?" he said. "Yes, there is."

"Perhaps you know him also, Messer Blondel?"

"Yes, I know him. He served the State," Blondel answered quietly. He had winked at more than one irregularity on the part of Grio, and at the sound of the name anger gave place to caution. "I have also," he continued, "my eye upon him, as I shall have it upon Basterga. Will that satisfy you, Messer Petitot?"

The councillor leaned forward. "Fac salvam Genevam!" he replied in a voice low and not quite steady. "Do that, keep Geneva safe--guard well our faith, our wives and little ones--and I care not what you do!" And he rose from his seat.

The Fourth Syndic did not answer. Those few words that in a moment raised the discussion from the low level of detail on which the Inquisitor commonly wasted himself, and set it on the true plane of patriotism--for with all his faults Petitot was a patriot--silenced Blondel while they irritated and puzzled him. Why did the man assume such airs? Why talk as if he and he alone cared for Geneva? Why bear himself as if he and he alone had shed and was prepared to shed his blood for the State? Why, indeed? Blondel snarled his indignation, but made no other answer.

A few minutes later, as he descended the stairs, he laughed at the momentary annoyance which he had felt. What did it matter to him, a dying man, who had the better or who the worse, who posed, or who believed in the pose? It was of moment indeed that his enemies had contrived to fix him with the responsibility of arresting Basterga, or of leaving him at large: that they had contrived to connect him with the Paduan, and made him accountable to an extent which did not please him for the man's future behaviour. But yet again what did that matter--after all? Of what moment was it--after all? He was a dying man. Was anything of moment to him except the one thing which Basterga had it in his power to grant or to withhold, to give or to deny?

Nothing! Nothing!

He pondered on what had passed, and wondered if he had not done foolishly. Certainly he had let slip a grand, a unique opportunity of seizing the man and of snatching the _remedium_. He had put the chance from him at the risk of future blame. Now he was of two minds about it. Of two minds: but of one mind only about another thing. As he veered this way and that in his mind, now cursing his cowardice, and now thanking God that he had not taken the irrevocable step,

Opportunity That work'st our thoughts into desires, desires To resolutions,

kindled in him a burning impatience to act. If he did not act, if he were not going to act, if he were not going to take some surer and safer step, he had been foolish and trebly foolish to let slip the opportunity that had been his.

But he would act. For a fortnight he had abstained from visiting Basterga, and had even absented himself from the neighbourhood of the house lest the scholar's suspicions should be wakened. But to what purpose if he were not going to act? If he were not going to build on the ground so carefully