‘It is easily explained,’ continued Cestus, with a rough laugh; ‘the noble Fabricius is vastly rich and his nephew wanted it all to himself—the girl was in the way.’
‘Execrable wretch!’ cried Afer, beside himself with terror and fury. He made a spring towards the Suburan, but those near him clung to his garments and arrested the movement. The Suburan, on his part, bounced back precipitately, and then [pg 414]seeing the knight’s advance stayed, broke out into a jeering, but, at the same time, nervous laugh.
‘Peace, I say again, Afer,’ said Tiberius more sternly; ‘the justness of your cause can surely well await until the end. Go on, Suburan, and relate the whole of your story of this affair. Add nothing, omit nothing, and be as brief as possible.’
Cestus did as he was required, and revealed the full extent of his relations with the knight, on whose pallid brow the perspiration gathered in drops with the violence of his emotions.
Step by step the pitiless tale went on, laying bare, with extreme minuteness, the whole history of the connection between noble and vagabond from its commencement. Nothing was omitted down to the last violent meeting by the Circus Maximus. Thence, in conclusion, the Suburan ran over the occurrences which we have already described.
‘And that is everything, Caesar,’ he said, when he had finished. ‘Every word I have said is truth—I swear it, by all the gods. If it were a lie, should I have been fool enough to have made myself out to be the thief? No, it is when thieves fall out that honest men get their own. I don’t seek to hide myself—not I; but for the man’s sake, who tempted me and hired me, I have made a clean breast of it and exposed myself. He paid me at last with a dagger thrust, like a false-hearted coward as he is, and now I’m even with him. See, here is the place—look at it for yourselves, and believe your own eyes!’
He hastily withdrew his tunic sufficiently to disclose the recently-healed scar in his left side, where Afer had struck his desperate blow.
‘Lying knave, this is some slash received in a drunken night-brawl in a Suburan stye, if it be there you dwell! The whole story is a fable, a cursed lie,’ broke in Afer again, whose aspect was ghastly to behold. ‘I know him not! Is this a return for my love, uncle? Shame that you should suffer it!’
‘Patience!’ said Tiberius, ‘let us finish. Fabricius, you have heard him confess that he decoyed you from your house, on a certain night, with a false tale about a comrade who [pg 415]was sick, and wished to see you, concerning your lost granddaughter—is it true, and do you recognise him?’
‘It is true enough,’ replied Fabricius, whose horror-stricken feelings were displayed distressingly in his voice and demeanour; ‘I seemed to remember his face again, and a thousand times, from Rome hither, have I tried to bring him more exactly to my mind. But now, as he related the occurrence, I recognised him—yes, it is the same wretch who came to me that night. His description of what occurred is perfect—it is too well graven on my mind. But for the timely appearance of the troop of Pretorians with Martialis the Centurion, the wretch would have succeeded only too well in his evil intent. This new infamy comes unexpectedly on me, Caesar, and it tries me hard——’