“‘These many, then, shall die; their names are prick’d.’”
“Pricked!” echoed George triumphantly. “He has denounced them—two of them—the two we know! Thorpe and Patterson. But perhaps that is a gross improbability—a mere coincidence. If anything is lacking to make the denunciation complete, terrible and compelling, it is now supplied. The next words Antony speaks——”
“Wait a minute,” said Pringle, eying Beebe. “Let’s see if Billy can carry on your argument. Can you, Billy?”
Billy put a shaky finger on the blot. His voice was hoarse with passion.
“‘He shall not live; look, with a spot I damn him!’”
“He shall not live,” repeated Pringle, “this honorable senator—not if I have to strangle him with my bare hands!”
“I—I suppose you are right,” gasped Leo, aghast. “But, suffering saints, he must think we are remarkable men to study out anything so obscure as all that. Why, there isn’t one chance in a million for it!”
“Well—so we all are, just that kind of men,” said George modestly, “even if some of us are chiefly remarkable for incredulity and—firmness. Obscure? Why, dear man, it had to be obscure! If it hadn’t been obscure it would never have been allowed to reach us—I mean, of course, to reach Mrs. Bransford. And yet, in a way, it was neither so obscure nor so remarkable. In the first place, this is not a case of solving puzzles, with a nickel-plated Barlow knife for a prize, or a book for good little girls. This letter means something; it is the urgent call of a friend in need; we are friends indeed, grown-up men, and it is our business to find out what it means. We have to find out; a man’s life is the prize—and more than that, as it turns out. He sent you to me as interpreter, not because he wanted Mr. Pringle to take orders from me, but for the one only reason that it was not obscure to me, and that he knew it would not be obscure to me. Do you notice that I did not have to turn to the play to verify the quotations? It is fresh in my mind and in his: we read it aloud together, we spouted it at each other, we used phrases of it instead of words to carry on ordinary conversation. Mr. Beebe here, when once he was on the right track, could supply the words for the most difficult of all the allusions, though he had probably not read the book for years.”
“I ain’t never read this Mr. Shakspere much, myself,” said Pringle meditatively. “But oncet—’twas the first time I was ever in love—I read all that stuff of Tennyson’s about King Arthur’s ‘Ten Knights in a Bar Room,’ and I want to tell you that I couldn’t even think of anything else for a month. So it seems mighty natural that Jeff, with his head full of this Shakspere party, would try that particular way of getting word to us, and no other. You spoke of a message for me, Mr. Aughinbaugh?”
“I did. Of a message sent in the knowledge that for all your daring, for all your devotedness, you may not be able to avert the threatened danger. In his desperate pass he sends to you, as if he spoke with you face to face for the last time, the words of Brutus to his friend: