"Indeed?" "Ay." "Then I would like to know it. What is it he has done?" "He has left undone that which he was ordered to do," Blondel answered more soberly than he had yet spoken. He had recovered something of his power to reason. "That is what he has done. But for his default we should at this moment be in a position to seize Basterga." "Ay?" "Ay, and to seize him with proof of his guilt! Proof and to spare." "But I could not know," Louis whimpered. "Worshipful gentlemen, I could not know. I could not know what it was you wanted." "I told you to bring the contents of the box." "Letters, ay! Letters, worthy sir, but not----" "Silence, and go into that room!" Blondel pointed with a shaking finger to a small inner serving-room at the end of the parlour. "Go!" he repeated peremptorily, "and stay there until I come to you." Then, but not until the lad had taken his tear-bedabbled face into the closet and had closed the door behind him, the Syndic turned to the three. "I ask your pardon," he said, making no attempt to disguise the agitation which still moved him. "But it was enough, it was more than enough, to try me." He paused and wiped his brow, on which the sweat stood in beads. "He had under his hand the papers," looking at them a little askance as if he doubted whether the explanation would pass, "that we need! The papers that would convict Basterga. And because they did not wear the appearance he expected--because they were disguised, you understand--they were in a bottle in fact--and were not precisely what he expected----" "He left them?" "He left them." There was something like a tear, a leaden drop, in the corner of the Fourth Syndic's eye. "Still if he had access to them once," Petitot suggested briskly, "what has been done once may be done twice. He may gain access to them again. Why not?" "He may, but he may not. Still, I should have thought of that and--and made allowance," Blondel answered with a fair show of candour. "But too often an occasion let slip does not return, as you well know. The least disorder in the box he searched may put Basterga on the alert, and wreck my plans." They did not answer. They felt one and all, Petitot and Baudichon no less than Fabri, that they had done this man an injustice. His passion, his chagrin, his singleness of aim, the depth of his disappointment, disarmed even those who were in the daily habit of differing from him. Was this--this the man whom they had secretly accused of lukewarmness? And to whom they had hesitated to entrust the safety of the city? They had done him wrong. They had not credited him with a tithe of the feeling, the single-mindedness, the patriotism which it was plain he possessed.