“Eet would be more dangare than zis job, and you deed not do zis.”
“Still I was willing it should be done, and that——”
“Ees notting. All zat make me feel bad ees zat I deed not keel zat boy myself. I hate heem—mon Dieu! how I hate heem! He be ze ruain of ze brozarehood in Paree.”
“And he stood between me and one I care for very much,” declared Glanworth. “Since she met him here in London she has scarcely been civil to me, and we were fast becoming more than friends and cousins before that.”
“Let ze girls alone,” advised the Frenchman. “Zat ees what I tell all zot work for ze int’res’ of ze people. Woman she all ze time get man into trouble.”
“You know why I am one of you,” said Glanworth. “My father labored for the cause till he was banished. If proof could have been brought against him, he would have been imprisoned, but suspicion was not proof, and so he was banished. Poor father! He died in America, still laboring for our glorious cause.”
By this time Frank was able to open his eyes. He did so cautiously, and he saw the trio seated at a table, on which was a bottle of whiskey and glasses. The third man, whose voice he had not recognized, was the bomb-thrower.
“They think me dead,” flashed through the boy’s mind. “Perhaps it will be the best for me to continue to play dead.”
He maintained perfect silence, for all that he was cramped and aching in all parts of his body.
He had been thrown down in the corner of the wretched room, which was miserably furnished, the floors and walls being bare.