An hour later he stood at the window, waiting to descend. The rope was in place; he had fastened it to a beam; deep mid-night slept upon the village.
“She has done this thing for me,” he thought—“given the bond—risked all to right her fault. What else or greater could she do? God make her happy!”
CHAPTER XII
Bonito, startled out of dreams of immortality, returned to earth with a shock. Something—somebody had spoken to him!
Even so—taken by surprise, his wits momentarily confounded—habitual wariness kept him stone-still where he lay, his head dropped back upon the forge, while he strove desperately to excogitate his right answer to the situation. For the instant of his waking had been one with his recognition of the voice—and of a flaw, moreover, in his own policy. The consequences were facing him at once, and tremendously. He knew that his life at this moment hung upon a word.
“Where is the bond, I say? Will you wait for me to cut it out of you?”
Still he made no answer. The sooty beams in the roof seemed to undulate above his half-closed lids as the light pulsated in the lantern. He thought he saw the pin-point eyes of innumerable spiders watching him from their secret places. They affected him curiously; he could not concentrate his thoughts while they held him so intently. There were some means he possessed—he was certain of it—for retort or self-defence, could he only recall them. But those eyes held him from the effort. While he was still in a mortal struggle to escape them, the voice spoke again, quick and damning.
“What use in this pretence? I know thee—never so wide awake. Thou dog! O, thou ineffable dog! to wring it from her ruin! That once for last was once too many. Down you go!”
Still he lay as silent as death, though a pulse of life—it was plain enough—went shadowing up and down on his strained chest.
“Not?” said Cartouche horribly. “Do you know what’s here, Bonito?—the pretty little jade and golden toy? What Providence dropped it at your feet! It wakes strange thoughts in me to hold it in my hand again—the throats it split, blood lapped—all honest sport so long as it was mine. Will you not give me up the bond, lest her pure name put to it be soiled? Well, then—no ‘law’ for you—not to be thought of where she’s concerned. I’d come to kill you, beast—just my hands against yours—and behold! you’ve given me a weapon!”