It was a case for bold measures if he would gain time. Given this, he knew that all things may become possible, and there was one particular thing his shrewd calculations accounted probable here if only he could induce them to postpone until to-morrow the slitting of his throat.
'So be it. From here to Cigliano it is no more than a day's ride on a good horse. Let one of you go ask the Abbot of the Grazie the name of him Facino left in the convent's care.'
'A name?' cried Casella, sneering. 'Is that all the proof?'
'All if the man who goes is a fool. If not he may obtain from the Abbot a minute description of this Bellarion. If more is needed I'll give you a note of the clothes I wore and the gear and money with which I left the Grazie that you may obtain confirmation of that, too.'
But Barbaresco was impatient. 'Even so, what shall all this prove? It cannot prove you true. It cannot prove that you are not a spy sent hither to betray and sell us.'
'No,' Bellarion agreed. 'But it will prove that the identity on which I won to court is what I represent it, and that will be something as a beginning. The rest—if there is more—can surely wait.'
'And meanwhile ...?' Casella was beginning.
'Meanwhile I am in your hands. You're never so blood-thirsty that you cannot postpone murdering me until you've verified my tale?'
That was what they fell to discussing among themselves there in his very presence, affording him all the excitement of watching the ball of his fate tossed this way and that among the disputants.
In the end the game might have gone against him but for Count Spigno, who laboured Bellarion's own argument that if he had betrayed them he would never have incurred the risk of returning amongst them.