“Only this, that Vasco de Guerra, at supper last night, gave to the Six Drunkards of Brussels, who have come here for the drinking bout with Floris, a pigeon pie containing six pigeons which he asserted he had shot with his cross-bow, but he spoke of the seventh, declaring for the head of the seventh he would receive such a reward that would enable him to give a great banquet to his comrades.” With this Guy tells the astounded Oliver what he saw and heard at the carouse of the Six Drunkards of Brussels in the Painted Inn the night before. “Yes, that’s proof enough, proof that he has my secret—he of all men, he who is sure to use it—this Vasco de Guerra is my enemy. He is a miserable scamp, disreputable enough to be cashiered from the Spanish army—think what that must be, when soldiers are permitted to beg, steal, murder, torture and ravage without one word of rebuke from their officers. What must a man be who is cast out from such troops as this? He is a drunken fortune hunter; he seeks the hand of Mina Bodé Volcker, who loves me. He has her maid, Wiarda Schwartz in his pay.” “Aha!” returns Guy. “That is the reason she treated me so cavalierly when I asked for you last night.” “Wiarda? Yes, miserable little paid soubrette. But we must think—we must act—and that quickly,” returns the painter, who seems to have regained composure, now that he knows his betrayer. “Vasco must guess the value of these letters, for he must have been upon my scent for weeks. He will try to decipher them himself, for he will not wish to trust the information to others who might obtain the reward for it. He can hardly act to-day. He doubtless keeps them on his person.” “In that case we must kill him at once,” says Guy. “That’s what we’ve got to do. We must kill him for both our sakes. At all events, we must have the papers. Send for him, get him here, and I will do his business with a dirk. Then we can carry him out and toss him into the flood. He’ll float away to the ocean. There are plenty of drowned carcasses like his, so it will not be noticed.” “No,” says the painter, “that might bring suspicion upon us. Perhaps I can suggest a better way,” and begins to think, racking his subtle Flemish brain as it has never been racked before. Ten seconds and he cries out, hope in voice, joy in his eyes: “At the drinking bout Floris is sure to win. Floris will drink every one of the Six Drunkards of Brussels under the table, insensible, inert, lifeless. In the confusion we can assist the insensible Vasco from the table, take him to a room apparently to revive him, and steal from him the letters he has stolen from me.” “But if Vasco wins?” “Impossible! I’ve seen Floris drink more wine at one sitting than any other human beast on earth, I think, can hold and live.”