It was plainly necessary to take up the gauntlet which had been thrown down; so Antonio placed his hand on his heart, and said:
"I swear I am not a Jesuit, either in disguise or out of it. I never was a Jesuit; am not now; and never shall be."
"Amen," said Mr. Crowberry, not without traces of thankfulness and earnestness in his tones; "I'm glad you're letting me off the old Madeira. Hallo! Time's up. Here's Sir Percy."
"D'ye hear? Am I to wait all day while you stand there chattering?" Sir Percy bawled out. And he strode back into the chapel.
Everybody made haste to follow. But before they could see whence it proceeded a horrible noise set their teeth on edge. It was as though somebody was creaking a basket-lid near a hive of buzzing bees. Antonio knew that the saw had begun to revolve. He pressed forward and found Sir Percy's gray-headed stolid man-servant Jackson working a treadle at the foot of the azulejos. High above Jackson's head the saw was grinding round in the acidulated cement.
"It works!" cried Sir Percy. "D'ye hear, all of you? D'ye see? It works!"
As the saw's teeth bit and chewed the acrid cud a fine gritty dust flew up into a sunbeam and glittered like the spray of a waterfall. The noise increased, until it resembled the drawing of a great slate pencil backwards along a vast slate. Isabel and Mrs. Baxter put their fingers in their ears.
"It works, it works, it works!" repeated Sir Percy. His eyes shone. Antonio glanced at him and shuddered. One moment he looked like a boy of twenty; the next, he looked a hundred years old.
The saw went on gnawing, gnawing, biting, biting, screaming, screaming, like an obscene fiend, until the back of one azulejo seemed to be wholly cut through. This first azulejo—a tile about eight inches long—formed part of the multi-colored border which framed the picture of the Saint's pious boyhood. Antonio watched it with a white face and a thumping heart. Suddenly he shouted:
"Look out! Stand clear!"