“The letters brought to me by carrier pigeons from Louis of Nassau, with whom I am in correspondence for the benefit of the Netherlands. Of course they are in cipher, they cannot be construed in a moment; but the hair has been cut, the sword is descending, I am no better than a dead man; worse than that—I am a tortured man! Oh, my God! think of the rack, the faggot, that await me!” and the Fleming’s eyes become bloodshot, his cheeks gray, and his lips blue.
“If we could discover the man who has your secret,” says the Englishman, prompt to action, well knowing that danger to Oliver now means danger to himself.
“Ah! but how? When Alva arrives the man will surely give him the information; it would be very valuable, warning of a traitor in the Duke’s own corresponding bureau. I—I had been anxious all the morning. When I—I arrived here I expected to find the pigeons with the letters tied to their tails from Louis. Now I know—the reason. Six! Six letters—each one of them enough to send me to the slow fire!” moans the painter, striking his hands together till his finger nails are blue.
“Six! Six pigeons!” echoes Guy. Then he suddenly cries: “Do you know a man with dark, fishy eyes, such as the boy described, and a black mustache with one single, whitish gray lock in it?”
“My God!” cries the artist. “I do. He—you have told me who—Vasco de Guerra—my enemy! He has—has my letters!—What gave you the clue?”
“Only this, that Vasco de Guerra, at supper last night, [[68]]gave to the Six Drunkards of Brussels, who have come here for the drinking bout with Floris, a pigeon pie containing six pigeons which he asserted he had shot with his cross-bow, but he spoke of the seventh, declaring for the head of the seventh he would receive such a reward that would enable him to give a great banquet to his comrades.”
With this Guy tells the astounded Oliver what he saw and heard at the carouse of the Six Drunkards of Brussels in the Painted Inn the night before.
“Yes, that’s proof enough, proof that he has my secret—he of all men, he who is sure to use it—this Vasco de Guerra is my enemy. He is a miserable scamp, disreputable enough to be cashiered from the Spanish army—think what that must be, when soldiers are permitted to beg, steal, murder, torture and ravage without one word of rebuke from their officers. What must a man be who is cast out from such troops as this? He is a drunken fortune hunter; he seeks the hand of Mina Bodé Volcker, who loves me. He has her maid, Wiarda Schwartz in his pay.”
“Aha!” returns Guy. “That is the reason she treated me so cavalierly when I asked for you last night.”
“Wiarda? Yes, miserable little paid soubrette. But we must think—we must act—and that quickly,” returns the painter, who seems to have regained composure, now that he knows his betrayer. “Vasco must guess the value of these letters, for he must have been upon my scent for weeks. He will try to decipher them himself, for he will not wish to trust the information to others who might obtain the reward for it. He can hardly act to-day. He doubtless keeps them on his person.”