“Then they started?”
“Yes, they started about five minutes ago. I was disgusted with that stranger’s folly. An Englishman too!—He ought to have known Reuben’s nag was not fit to drive.”
“But if he had no choice?”
“No choice, your Excellency?” protested the Jew, in a rasping voice, “did I not repeat to him a dozen times, that my horse and cart would take him quicker, and more comfortably than Reuben’s bag of bones. He would not listen. Reuben is such a liar, and has such insinuating ways. The stranger was deceived. If he was in a hurry, he would have had better value for his money by taking my cart.”
“You have a horse and cart too, then?” asked Chauvelin, peremptorily.
“Aye! that I have, your Excellency, and if your Excellency wants to drive . . .”
“Do you happen to know which way my friend went in Reuben Goldstein’s cart?”
Thoughtfully the Jew rubbed his dirty chin. Marguerite’s heart was beating well-nigh to bursting. She had heard the peremptory question; she looked anxiously at the Jew, but could not read his face beneath the shadow of his broad-brimmed hat. Vaguely she felt somehow as if he held Percy’s fate in his long, dirty hands.
There was a long pause, whilst Chauvelin frowned impatiently at the stooping figure before him: at last the Jew slowly put his hand in his breast pocket, and drew out from its capacious depths a number of silver coins. He gazed at them thoughtfully, then remarked, in a quiet tone of voice,—
“This is what the tall stranger gave me, when he drove away with Reuben, for holding my tongue about him, and his doings.”