"Yes, it is, and public prosecutor I will be, too. I want six counties to place their armed constabulary at my beck and call, and if they do, I'll wager that I'll so purify all these Alpine regions that the robbers will not have a single lurking hole left."
"Rubbish! Don't make a fool of yourself. Besides, they say that Fatia Negra has flown to America."
"Newspaper lies. He is here, I know he is."
"And suppose he is, what harm can he do? This band has been cut off to the very last man. They have all been sentenced heavily, the older men to twenty years penal servitude, the younger men to penal servitude for life. I had it from Hátszegi himself who was the president of the mixed commission that tried them, and signed the judgment himself. The whole fraternity is now sitting in chains in the trenches of Gyula Fehérvár and we have seen the last of it."
"What guarantee have you of that?"
"What guarantee?—why the security of the whole region ever since. Why, everyone there can now sleep with open doors and if you yourself were to lie dead drunk in the public thoroughfare you would not have your money stolen from your pocket any more."
Squire Gerzson protested vehemently against the assumption that he was in the habit of sprawling tipsily on the king's high road.
"I'll tell you," said he, "why everything is so secure just now. The confiscated gold of Fatia Negra is still at Gyula Fehérvár, as a forfeit to the crown, and, sooner or later, must be sent to Vienna. Fatia Negra is not dead, his robber band has not been captured and does not sit in irons at Gyula Fehérvár, and the present tranquillity and imagined security suit their plans nicely. The band now pretends to have vanished, but just you wait till the gold is sent under convoy from Gyula Fehérvár to Vienna—and you will see some fun."
"How do you know that?"
"I know it sir, because I know that this man, this brazen faced, iron-fisted man is not such a chicken-hearted creature as to allow a half-million or so to be snatched from him without stirring every nerve and muscle to try and win it back again. For I know that hitherto he has always triumphed over the power of the law and has always escaped from the most dangerous ambushes."