"That should be the house for me," Bevill thought, as now he rode back towards it. "A front room here, on the lower floor, if it may be obtained; the river almost at its feet, boats tied to old posts and stanchions. All is well. If danger threatens, as well it may, then have I the way open to me."
For Bevill had not been a soldier for nothing, nor had he forgotten that he who attempts daring deeds should ever have a retreat open in case of need.
That the business he was now about was, in absolute truth, of almost foolhardy daring he had known and recognised from the moment he decided to undertake it as he stood before the Earl of Peterborough at Fulham; while, as he advanced farther and farther through a land which, though not itself hostile to England, was in the clutches of England's greatest enemy, he had more and more recognised this to be the case. But now that he was here, in a city surrounded by those who had possessed themselves of it during a peace that had never been a complete one, a city whose heights and strong places were full of the enemy, he allowed no delusions to prevent him from acknowledging the perils by which he was surrounded. If he should be suspected, watched, and either denounced or arrested, there would be no hope for him. He was neither a soldier who would be saved by his calling nor a political agent who could be saved by any mission that might have been entrusted to him. He was merely a subject of the greatest enemy of France, disguised under a French name; a man who could have no ostensible reason for being here except as a spy.
"Impressed it with a ring he wore."
As, however, he reflected on all this, while forgetting no point that would tell deeply against him--there was not one that would tell in his favour!--he felt no qualm of apprehension, and fear itself was utterly absent. He had set his life upon this cast; the hazard of the die must bring him either a restitution of all that he desired, or total oblivion of all things in this world. He had elected to make the throw, even as the soldier stakes his life against either Fortune's buffets or rewards; fear had no part or parcel in the attempt. Yet, as with the soldier, it behoved him to be wary, to fling no chance away, to risk no more than every brave attempt requires to make it a successful one.
What Bevill hoped to find at the "Gouden Leeuw" was, happily, obtainable. A room was put at his disposal which, while looking across the quay on to the river, had also, since it was at an angle of the house, another window giving on to an alley that ran along the side of the inn.
"Therefore," Bevill said to himself, "all is very well. Should I be sought for when I am in this room I still have two other modes of egress beside the door. Should they attempt to get at me from either window, still I have the door. Short of surrounding the house, I can hardly be trapped, and not at all without making a good fight of it."
"Yet," he continued to muse, as now he endeavoured to make himself presentable and, at the least, well washed and brushed and combed, since he intended at sunset to make his way to Sylvia according to the directions on the letter he bore; "yet it may never come to this. I obtained entrance easily to this city; I have but the brains of a bird if, after I have made myself well acquainted with the place, I do not discover some way of getting Mistress Thorne and myself out of it."
By this time the sun was beginning to dip towards where the North Sea lay afar off; already its rays were slanting across the Meuse and into the windows of his room. The air was becoming cooler; soon the evening would be at hand; and then he would make his way towards the "Weiss Haus," as he knew the abode of the late Mr. Thorne was termed; and, if it might be, present his credentials to the young mistress of that house.