Was it well that Bertie did not suspect? If he had known, if he could but have known or guessed that, so far from being such as he imagined, the victim had been his own stalwart friend and comrade who had fallen beneath the foul assassin's knife, could he have restrained himself enough not to have dashed his brains out against the prison walls?
"Ha! ha!" laughed Fordingbridge, while at the same time there came into his eyes the awful look of cunning so peculiar to maniacs--"ha! ha! I know. But the secret's mine--mine--and the priests'. Yet, though I confided in them--confessed to them--they still denounced me, will now slay me. They say," he went on, putting out a long, shaking finger and endeavouring to touch the arm of the poor old marquis, who shrank back from him as from some foul creature, "they say that not even my English peerage can save me, since the priests are determined to have vengeance. Do you think that is so? Will they kill an English peer?"
"There is," said De Chevagny coldly--for now he knew that the creature he had pitied when first he came to this room was a cold-blooded assassin who had probably gone mad from terror afterwards--"there is no reason why they should not. The priests have slain many French peers who were not murderers--Son Eminence Grise more than a hundred, they say. Why should they not slay an English peer who is such as you are?"
"But not by the wheel," Fordingbridge moaned, "not by the wheel. Oh, to think of it!" and again he mowed and mouthed as he spoke. "I have seen men killed thus--there was one at--at--I forget the place--my memory is gone--but I saw him. They broke his bones with iron bars, and finished by beating in his chest-bone, and----" breaking off inconsequently, "I want my dinner; I am hungry."
In disgust the others turned away from him, while he threw himself on his bed in the corner and moaned again that he was hungry.
"I have had many strange companions in this cell in my time," said Chevagny, in his quiet, sad tones, "but never one like this. It is an insult to put such as he is in with us."
"Will they execute him as he fears?" asked Bertie. "I had always thought that the Bastille detained its prisoners or sent them forth free. I knew not that condemned men went from it to meet their death."
"Many have so gone forth," the other replied, "though generally only traitors. Yet this man stands in evil case, too; he has murdered, I judge from what he has now said, a priest--a Jesuit; if so, he must die, for the Jesuits are powerful in the Bastille--Gerville, the chaplain, is himself one. And, if he is a murderer, he should die."
"In truth he should," replied Bertie, "nor would I lift a finger to save him. For he is a murderer in more senses than one: he has slain two lives already--my own and another. I had sworn to myself to kill him if we ever met; we have done so, and lo! I cannot slay him. No matter, let the Place de Grève do its work!"
That he should feel no pity for the wretch lying there on his bed was not strange; he had wrought far too much bitter woe to Elphinston for such a sentiment to rise into his heart. Indeed, instead of pity, there had come into his mind now a great desire to discover, if possible, who the victim could be whom Fordingbridge had slain. He had not actually said it was a priest, though the Marquis de Chevagny had suggested that it was one, and as Bertie pondered on all this a terrible idea flashed into his mind--was the victim Archibald Sholto? He knew that Fordingbridge hated him, he knew that Archibald possessed many secrets of his; could it be that he had come upon him unawares and slain him? If so, if such was the case, then it was not strange that the Jesuits had determined upon his execution. And as he reflected on all this he determined that, if Fordingbridge were not taken away to his doom at once, he would find out who it was that had fallen victim to his treachery.