“We cannot, with infinite regret, assume that, Monsieur, but personally I would venture a suggestion,” said Buhot, coming closer on the table and assuming an affable air. “In this business, Hamilton is a tool—no more; and a poor one at that, badly wanting the grindstone. To break him—phew!—'twere as easy as to break a glass, but he is one of a great movement and the man we seek is his master—one Father Fleuriau of the Jesuits. Hamilton's travels were but part of a great scheme that has sent half a dozen of his kind chasing the Prince in the past year or two from Paris to Amsterdam, from Amsterdam to Orleans, from Orleans to Hamburg, Seville, Lisbon, Rome, Brussels, Potsdam, Nuremburg, Berlin. The same hand that extracted his bullets tapped the priest's portfolio and found the wretch was in promise of a bishopric and a great sum of money. You see, M. Greig, I am curiously frank with my prisoner.”
“And no doubt you have your reasons,” said I, but beat, myself, to imagine what they could be save that he might have proofs of my innocence.
“Very well,” said M. Buhot. “To come to the point, it is this, that we desire to have the scheme of the Jesuits for the Prince's assassination, and other atrocities shocking to all that revere the divinity of princes, crumbled up. Father Hamilton is at the very roots of the secret; if, say, a gentleman so much in his confidence as yourself—now, if such a one were, say, to share a cell with this regicide for a night or two, and pursue judicious inquiries——”
“Stop! stop!” I cried, my blood hammering in my head, and the words like to choke me. “Am I to understand that you would make me your spy and informer upon this miserable old madman that has led me such a gowk's errand?”
Buhot slid back off the table edge and on to his feet. “Oh,” said he, “the terms are not happily chosen: 'spy'—'informer'—come, Monsieur Greig; this man is in all but the actual accomplishment of his purpose an assassin. 'Tis the duty of every honest man to help in discovering the band of murderers whose tool he has been.”
“Then I'm no honest man, M. Buhot,” said I bitterly, “for I've no stomach for a duty so dirty.”
“Think of it for a moment,” he pressed, with evident surprise at my decision. “Bicêtre is an unwholesome hostelry, I give you my word. Consider that your choice is between a night or two there and—who knows?—a lifetime of Galbanon that is infinitely worse.”
“Then let it be Galbanon!” I said, and lifted my sword and slapped it furiously, sheathed as it was, like a switch upon the table.