"A gentleman, your Grace," said I, "must be trusted, or he cannot serve."
He looked round the little cell and asked significantly,
"Is your state such as to entitle you to make conditions?"
"Only if your Grace has need of services which I can give or refuse," I answered, bowing.
His irritation suddenly vanished, or seemed to vanish. He leant back in his chair and laughed.
"Yet all the time," said he, "you've guessed the gentleman! Isn't it so? Come, Mr Dale, we understand one another. This service, if all goes well, is simple. But if you're interrupted in leaving the Castle, you must use your sword. Well, if you use your sword and don't prove victorious, you may be taken. If you're taken it will be best for us all that you shouldn't know the name of this gentleman, and best for him and for me that I should not have mentioned it."
The little doubt I had harboured was gone. Buckingham and Monmouth were hand in hand. Buckingham's object was political, Monmouth was to find his reward in the prize that I was to rescue from the clutches of M. de Perrencourt and hand over to him at the hostelry in Deal. If success attended the attempt, I was to disappear; if it failed, my name and I were to be the shield and bear the brunt. The reward was fifty guineas, and perhaps a serviceable gratitude in the minds of two great men, provided I lived to enjoy the fruit of it.
"You'll accept this task?" asked the Duke.
The task was to thwart M. de Perrencourt and gratify the Duke of Monmouth. If I refused it, another might accept and accomplish it; if such a champion failed, M. de Perrencourt would triumph. If I accepted, I should accept in the fixed intention of playing traitor to one of my employers. I might serve Buckingham's turn, I should seek to thwart Monmouth.