"John Carstairs."
Even as I spoke the postillion cracked his whip, and the great carriage rolled out of the courtyard, the lamps twinkling and illuminating our faces as it passed before the window. Showed, too, as they flashed on Juan's face, that he was once more deathly pale and all his rich colouring vanished--as I had seen it vanish more than once before.
CHAPTER XVIII.
BETRAYED.
"His name is Carstairs? Humph!" Juan said to me when the last sound of the wheels had died away, and we no longer heard the rumbling of the great Berlin upon the stones of the roughly paved street outside. "Carstairs!"
"That is the name under which he was entered as a passenger in the papers of La Mouche Noire," I answered. Then continued, looking at the boy as a thought came to my mind. "Why! have you ever seen him before, Juan, or have you any reason to suppose it is anything else than Carstairs?"
For the thought that had come to me, the recollection which had suddenly sprung to my mind, was the memory of the words Captain Tandy had used when first we discussed the old man. "'Tis no more his name than 'tis mine or yours."
Also I recalled that he had said, after meditation, that he was more like to have been one Cuddiford than anybody else.
And now it seemed as though this stripling who had become my companion, this boy whose years scarce numbered eighteen, also knew something of him--disbelieved that his name was Carstairs.
"Do you think," I went on, "that it is something else? Cuddiford, say?"