"But I go too quickly—far too quickly indeed. I must rest my poor brain now, or it will rattle in my head like a dry walnut. When it begins to rattle, I know that I have done enough for the present. May I walk in the garden again—not alone, but with your companionship?"
"Of course, unless you would like to retire and rest for a while."
"Presently I shall do so. And please permit nobody to enter the Grey Room but myself. Not a soul must go or come without me."
Sir Walter spoke.
"You still believe the peril is material then—an active, physical thing, controlled by a conscious human intelligence?"
"If I am right, it certainly is active enough."
They went into the garden, and Signor Mannetti, finding a snug seat in the sun, decided to stop there. Henry and his uncle exchanged glances, and the latter found his faith weakening, for the Italian's mind appeared to wander. He became more and more irrelevant, as it seemed. He spoke again of the old dog who was at his master's feet.
"Euthanasia for the aged. Why not? For that matter, I have considered it for myself in dark moments. Have you ever wondered why we destroy our pets, for love of them, yet suffer our fellow creatures to exist and endure to the very dregs Nature's most fiendish methods of dissolution? Again one of those terrible problems where mercy and religion cannot see eye to eye."
They uttered appropriate sentiments, and again the old man changed the subject and broke new ground.
"There was a prince—not your old dog—but a royal lad of the East—Prince Djem, the brother of the Sultan Bajazet. Do you know that story? Possibly not—it is unimportant enough, and to this day the sequel of the incident is buried in a mystery as profound as that of the Grey Room. Our later historians whitewash Alexander VI. concerning the matter of Prince Djem; but then it is so much the habit of later historians to whitewash everybody. A noble quality in human nature perhaps—to try and see the best, even while one can only do so by ignoring the worst. Certainly, as your poet says, 'Distance makes the heart grow fonder'; or, at any rate, softer. There is a tendency to side with the angels where we are dealing with historic dead. Nero, Caligula, Calvin, Alva, Napoleon, Torquemada—all these monsters and portents, and a thousand such blood-bespattered figures are growing whiter as they grow fainter. They will have wings and haloes presently. Yet not for me. I am a good hater, my friends. But Prince Djem—I wander so. You should be more severe with me and keep me to my point. Sultan Bajazet wanted his younger brother out of the way, and he paid the Papacy forty thousand ducats a year to keep the young fellow a prisoner in Italy. It was a gilded captivity and doubtless the dissolute Oriental enjoyed himself quite as well at Rome as he would have done in Constantinople. But after Alexander had achieved the triple tiara, Bajazet refused to pay his forty thousand ducats any longer. The Pope, therefore, wrote strongly to the Sultan, telling him that the King of France designed to seize Prince Djem and go to war on his account against the Turks. This does not weary you?"