“By your leave,” said Adrian, for the magician’s back was against the door. “I have business——”
“And so have I,” replied the sage, and went on whistling.
Then suddenly the side of one of the walls seemed to fall out, and through the opening emerged a man wrapped in a priest’s robe, and after him, Hague Simon, Black Meg, and another particularly evil-looking fellow.
“Got it all down?” asked the Master in an easy, everyday kind of voice.
The monk bowed, and producing several folios of manuscript, laid them on the table together with an ink-horn and a pen.
“Very well. And now, my young friend, be so good as to sign there, at the foot of the writing.”
“Sign what?” gasped Adrian.
“Explain to him,” said the Master. “He is quite right; a man should know what he puts his name to.”
Then the monk spoke in a low, business-like voice.
“This is the information of Adrian, called Van Goorl, as taken down from his own lips, wherein, among other things, he deposes to certain crimes of heresy, murder of the king’s subjects, an attempted escape from the king’s dominions, committed by his stepfather, Dirk van Goorl, his half-brother, Foy van Goorl, and their servant, a Frisian known as Red Martin. Shall I read the papers? It will take some time.”