He broke off and chuckled with demoniacal cunning, filled himself another bumper of wine, and drained the glass at a gulp.
"What did you do? And who are the men?"
He looked round at me with a leer of triumph, and, spreading out his hands with a wide sweeping gesture, he laughed and said:
"I spread a net, wide and fine and strong, and when all was right I baited it for a coward—a thin-blooded, hellish coward—and I caught him. You know him well enough; and if you saved my life just now, I can save yours in return. I snared him here to these rooms with a lie that I was ill and dying and wanted to make my peace with Heaven and confess; and he came running here in white-livered fear of what I should tell. That was ten days ago; and in the mean time, for weeks and months I had been probing and digging, and spying and discovering, till I had such knowledge of their doings as made a tale worth one's telling to any inquisitive old fool of a priest—and I let my lord the count have an inkling of this."
He leant back, laughed, and swore with glee.
"He came. I was in bed all white and shaking," and he illustrated the words with many gestures; "and my voice was feeble and quavering, like a dying pantaloon's, as I gurgled out what I meant, and said, 'I have written everything in a paper.' You should have seen his eyes glint at this. He urged me to be careful, not to speak too freely; and he asked to see the paper. I told him it was in a desk, and when he went to get it and his back was to me I was out of bed and upon him in a trice. I thrust him back into a chair and stood over him with my drawn sword, vowing by all the calendar that I would drive it into his bowels if he dared to so much as utter a squeak; and, by the Holy Ghost! I meant it too."
"Well?" I cried impatiently when he paused.
"Ho, but your white-livered, pigeon-hearted, sheepish coward is a pretty sight when his flesh goes gray, and his haggard eyes, drawn with fear, stare up at you from under a brow all flecked with fright-sweat. I wish you could have seen him. Well, I held him thus, told him all I knew, and made him write out a confession of the true means by which the young count had been lured to his death, the object of it all, and the story of the double plot this treacherous villain is carrying on. I had found out much, guessed more, and made him fill in what I didn't know. More than that, too, I made him promise me certain definite rewards when the plot succeeded, and to take me in with the rest as one of them—to work with them now and share with them afterward."
"You are one of them?" I cried.
"You saw the answer to that to-night by the old church. They played the game shrewdly enough. When I had let him go, one or two of the others came to me and wished me to attend a meeting. I promised; but I am not a lunatic, if their fool of a King is. No, no; I would not. Then they changed and said there was another quarrel to be picked with you, my friend; to send you to call on the young Count Gustav. But I said no; that you were a great swordsman, better than myself, which was a lie of course—but lies are everywhere in this Munich—and that I would not meet you. So they will find some other end for you. Then the next little friendly attention for me was the interview which you interrupted to-night."