‘Stop, Centurion,’ said Cestus, seizing him by the arm as he was turning to dash out of the house, ‘you are all wrong together. There is only one spot in the neighbourhood which can harbour kidnappers and the like. I was absent at the time, and if I had been here I could not have followed—that is for you to do.’
‘Name, then!’ cried Martialis, with contempt.
‘Capreae—Caesar!’
The young man stared as if petrified. His outstretched arm fell heavily to his side, and he dropped his head on his breast with a groan.
‘Did I not foresee it—did I not warn and beseech them to go by my advice?’ cried Cestus, wringing his hands and giving way once more to a burst of passion. ‘Did I not see and watch two fellows here in the shop some days ago? They were from the accursed island, and they came to mark down their game. I knew—I knew! But no one would listen. I begged and beseeched, almost on my knees, for them to quit the place—to go back with me to Rome, where they might be safe. But no—none would listen. Not they! And then the potter must needs take off to the island himself—must needs run his head into the tiger’s very jaws; all for the sake of showing some newfangled kind of glass he had found out. As if no patron was to be found other than a bloody, strangling, ravishing tyrant! The fool would not listen to what I said, though I went nearly crazy, but went on his mad way with a light heart, if one could judge by his smiling face. And here’s the end of it. He will never see his home again—he is murdered—the girl is missing, and I am robbed, ruined, cheated! Haste, Centurion, for all depends on thee. Bring her back, by hook or crook, for hark you, man, she is more than you think—she is of the Patrician order, and no more my sister’s child than you are——’
‘Are you going mad?’ said Martialis hoarsely.
‘Mad—no!’ shouted Cestus; ‘had they taken a madman’s advice all would have been well now, and the wench on her way to her people in Rome. She is no potter’s child, for I hold the proofs. There was money paid, I tell you, to put the child out of the way; but instead of murder she was brought here quietly and no one the wiser, save the woman there, who has passed for her mother—no, not even the villain who was at the bottom of it all.’
Martialis strode over to Tibia and laid his hand on her shoulder.
‘Mother,’ he said, ‘have you heard this?’
‘Yes,’ said the poor woman, looking up with her woe-stricken face, ‘I never had a child of my own.’