Two jurats who had waited on the outskirts of the crowd, furtively watching the effect of their sentence, burst in, as distracted as the Vicomte.
“Hang the man again and the whole world will laugh at you,” Ranulph said. “If you’re not worse than fools or Turks you’ll let him go. He has had death already. Take him back to the prison then, if you’re afraid to free him.” He turned on the crowd fiercely. “Have you nothing to say to this butchery?” he cried. “For the love of God, haven’t you anything to say?”
Half the crowd shouted “Let him go free!” and the other half, disappointed in the working out of the gruesome melodrama, groaned and hooted.
Meanwhile Mattingley stood as still as ever he had stood by his bahue in the Vier Marchi, watching—waiting.
The Vicomte conferred nervously with the jurats for a moment, and then turned to the guard.
“Take the prisoner to the Vier Prison,” he said. Mattingley had been slowly solving the problem of his salvation. His eye, like a gimlet, had screwed its way through Ranulph’s words into what lay behind, and at last he understood the whole beautiful scheme. It pleased him: Carterette had been worthy of herself, and of him. Ranulph had played his game well too. He only failed to do justice to the poor beganne, Dormy Jamais. But then the virtue of fools is its own reward. As the procession started back with the Undertaker’s Apprentice now following after Mattingley, not going before, Mattingley turned to him, and with a smile of malice said:
“Ch’est tres ship-shape, Maitre-eh!” and he jerked his head back towards the inadequate rope.
He was not greatly troubled about the rest of this grisly farce. He was now ready for breakfast, and his appetite grew as he heard how the crowd hooted and snarled yah! at the Undertaker’s Apprentice. He was quite easy about the future. What had been so well done thus far could not fail in the end.