What a scurrying and scampering there must have been in the burrows under Rufus Stevens' Sons when the rats scented their danger, thought Anthony. They had feared the girl's speaking with him, and so had poisoned her mind against him. They had seen even greater peril in Lafargue's going straightforwardly to Charles, as he must have done; and, to prevent this, they had cleverly diverted against the firm the very tide of suspicion which Magruder had thought to set against themselves.
"Oh, the rats," said Anthony; "oh, the damned, scampering, crafty rats!"
But why were they sending the girl from the city? He frowned over this perplexedly. The matter had a meaning he could not see. Then, as he pondered, there came from the back of his mind several things which arranged themselves oddly, and yet confidently, before him.
"What now?" said Anthony, looking at them, and frowning more than ever. "What now?"
The first of the things dealt with was his pause overnight at the Brig Tavern, off the New Castle road. The girl and her father had been there; and they had been associated with persons concerned in fostering piracy, to be carried on under French letters of marque.
"No doubt of that," acknowledged Anthony, and eyed the fact grudgingly; "they stood very intimately with them, indeed."
The second of the things was equally positive, and had been fathered by Christopher Dent on that very night. Many people had visited the Lafargues at their lodgings, French and American; Citizen Genêt, whose words and acts in behalf of legalized piracy had lately filled the public ear and eye, had been one of them.
"Yes," said Anthony, endeavoring to stare the fact out of countenance, "all that is true. But what has it to do with mademoiselle being on board this ship without her father?"
And just as the two things seemed to be wavering, and not at all certain of their purpose, a third fact advanced smartly to their help, and at once set itself to lighting lamps in Anthony's mind. And so, where he had groped before, he now saw clearly.
"The daughter is young," he said. "The father is old. The girl is strong of will; the old man is shaken and infirm. She is his right hand, his prop, the active half of his mind. If she were taken away, he'd be helpless; if she were not constantly at his side to guide his judgments he might be imposed upon. The father is a friend of the French agent, Genêt; and it is Genêt who commissions American-built and American-manned ships to sail against the English."