"Yes, their death is eminently satisfactory to me," remarked Pratt. "I was casting about in my mind for some safe way to punish their perfidy without getting into trouble myself, when this opportune accident to their health stepped in between me and my meditated revenge. A pious person might almost call it an intervention of Providence.
"I dare say we should have called it an intervention of the devil if we had not been fortunate enough to carry my lady off safely the night before it happened," laughed Colville.
"After all, their plot to kill her was rather fortunate, since we came in just in time to frustrate it," answered Pratt, "for if they had not conspired against her life we should not have thought of removing her that night and she must have fallen into the detective's hands on the ensuing day."
"The devil takes care of his own. I am certain his satanic majesty helped us in that affair," was the laughing reply.
The two villains continued to indulge in these pleasing retrospections of the past for some minutes, then separated, the physician going off on his medical duties, and the man about town to some of his familiar haunts of dissipation.
As they emerged from the hotel, each man, unconsciously to himself, was followed by another man who stole forth from the corridors of the building.
One of those men—the same who now followed Pratt—had been outside of Colville's door, with his ear glued to the keyhole during the progress of their interesting conversation. It was Mr. Shelton, the detective.
How little the two conspirators dreamed of what ears had listened to their nefarious schemes of forcing their victim into a loathsome marriage by the aid of some priest who disgraced the holy robe he wore by such sacrilege.
Fate was weaving her web silently but rapidly around the two wicked plotters, and ere long they would receive their reward.
Mr. Shelton had learned several facts unknown to him before while listening to that private conversation. He resumed his weary task of espionage, infused with new hope and courage, feeling within himself the consciousness that he must and would succeed.