His tale now went very near the truth. He had come under the suspicion of the conspirators last night as a result of his visit to court. Explanations had been demanded, and he had afforded them, as he exactly stated. But conscience making cowards of the conspirators, they bound him and locked him in a room until from Cigliano they should have confirmation of his tale. Count Spigno, fearing that his life might be in danger, came in the night to set him free.
'Which leads me to suspect,' said Bellarion, 'that Count Spigno, too, was an agent of your potency's. No matter. I keep to the events.'
The conspirators, he continued, were more watchful than Spigno suspected. They came upon the twain just as Bellarion's bonds had been cut, and Spigno had, fortunately, thrust a dagger into his hand. They fell upon Spigno, and one of them—the confusion at the moment did not permit him to say which—stabbed the unfortunate count. Bellarion would have shared his fate but that he hacked right and left with fist and dagger, wounding Barbaresco and certainly one other, possibly two others. Thus he broke through them, flung down the stairs, locked himself in the room on the mezzanine, and climbed out of the window into the arms of the watch.
'If your highness had not desired me to go to court, this would not have happened. But at least the conspirators are fled and the conspiracy is stifled in panic. Your highness is now safe.'
'Safe!' His highness laughed hard and cruelly. There was now in his mien none of that benignity which Montferrat was wont to admire in it. The pale blue eyes were hard as steel, a furrow at the base of his aquiline nose rendered sinister and predatory the whole expression of his countenance.
'Your blundering has destroyed the evidence by which I I might have made myself safe.'
'My blundering! Here's justice! Besides, if I were to give the evidence I withheld from the Podestà, if I were to give a true account of what happened at Barbaresco's ...'
'If you did that!' The Regent interrupted angrily. 'How would it look, do you suppose? A vagrant rogue, the associate of a bandit was closeted yesterday with me, and so far received my countenance that he was bidden to court. It would disclose a plot, indeed. It would be said that I plotted to fashion evidence against my nephew. Do you think that I have no enemies here in Casale and elsewhere in Montferrat besides Barbaresco and his plotters? If Spigno had lived, it would have been different, or even if we had Barbaresco and the others and could now wring the truth from them under torment. But Spigno is dead and the others gone.'
Bellarion deemed him bewildered by his own excessive subtleties.
'Does Barbaresco's flight give no colour to my tale?' he asked quietly.