"He came out at last," Stuven went on, even as those two whispered
together, "three weeks later. He found his horse at the inn where he
had left it; he rode slowly, a wounded man--wounded by me--to Liége.
But he never rode from me, out of my sight. We entered the gates close
together; he found a lodging, I slept in the street outside it.
Then--then--after I had tracked him for some days I knew that he was
tracking another. And at last I knew it was this man here," and again
Stuven's eyes were turned on Bevill. "If I could have warned you," he
said now to the latter, "I would have done so, but I could not leave
him and I never saw you except when he drew near to you.
"So it went on. Had he had time, I think he would have come to you and
denounced him," and now the man looked at De Violaine, "but he had
not. He rose early, went to his bed late; and he was wary. In dark
streets at night he had his sword drawn beneath his cloak; once, too,
he noticed me, and from that time he feared for his own life. I think
he understood that I was the man who fell on him at St. Trond.
"But now the night was come, the night of the storm. We--it was always
_we_--he intent on following this man, and I on following him--were on
our road to that great white house. Since dark I had been near the
Gouden Leeuw, and I saw this Englishman come forth, mount his horse
and ride to the house. I saw him enter a postern gate, opening it with
a key; it took him some time to help his horse through it. Then the
gate was shut again.
"A few moments later Sparmann went round to the wall on the other
side, and, finding another postern gate in that, took from his pocket
a key and entered; but he did not shut the gate, desiring doubtless to
leave the way clear to escape quickly if he needed to. Then I knew he
had been there before, or had been well directed how to gain entrance.
Also, I remembered that more than once I had seen him with a man who
on one occasion handed him something. I thought then that it was
money; now, on this night, I understood that it was the key that he
was using. And the man was _this_----" Stuven added, his eyes on
Francbois, the contempt of his voice as biting, as burning as the bite
of vitriol on live flesh; the very gesture of his hand, as he
indicated the other, blighting, withering, in its disdainful scorn.
And Francbois, trembling before his late judges and present warders,
and white, too, as the dead within their shrouds, could only mutter
"False, false, false--all false!"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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