“Yes, certainly for me,” said the magistrate.
“For us all,” came a chorus.
“Well, you fooled me all right,” I said, gaping at them for a moment like a bumpkin at a wax-work show, for the suddenness of the thing almost bewildered me. Then I laughed and added: “It seems I was sitting on a bag with more gunpowder in it than I knew. Which do you expect me to do—thank you for your present confidence or curse you for your former distrust?”
“The matter is ended, Mr. Donnington,” said Barosa. “And you have as much reason as we have to be glad the result is what it is.”
“And if it had gone the other way?”
He shrugged his shoulders and replied very drily: “You had better not ask perhaps. At such a crisis our methods with those who betray us cannot be—pleasant.”
“Which reminds me,” I said, turning to the man who had played the magistrate—whose real name I learnt was Sebastian Maral—“you’ve asked me plenty of questions and there are one or two I should like to ask you. How did you get that spurious letter I was supposed to write to M. Volheno?”
“I think we had better discuss those matters alone,” interposed Barosa; and then all but we three left the room.
“Was such a letter really written?” I asked.
“Certainly. That which you received was M. Volheno’s reply to it.”