“Not less, at least,” snapped the player. “You give me credit for no more wit than yourself. Do you think that I am the man to do things by halves? I have betrayed the plot to Albemarle; but do you imagine I have made no provision for what must follow?”
“Provision?” echoed Wilding, staring.
“Aye, provision. God lack! What do you suppose Albemarle will do?”
“Dispatch a messenger to Whitehall with the letter within an hour.”
“You perceive it, do you? And where the plague do you think Nick Trenchard'll be what time that messenger rides?”
Mr. Wilding understood. “Aye, you may stare,” sneered Trenchard. “A letter that has once been stolen may be stolen again. The courier must go by way of Walford. I had in my mind arranged the spot, close by the ford, where I should fall upon him, rob him of his dispatches, and take him—bound hand and foot if necessary—to Vallancey's, who lives close by; and there I'd leave him until word came that the Duke had landed.”
“That the Duke had landed?” cried Wilding. “You talk as though the thing were imminent.”
“And imminent it is. For aught we know he may be in England already.”
Mr. Wilding laughed impatiently. “You must forever be building on these crack-brained rumours, Nick,” said he.
“Rumours!” roared the other. “Rumours? Ha!” He checked his wild scorn, and proceeded in a different key. “I was forgetting. You do not know the Contents of that stolen letter.”