He continued to eye me, some six paces off, his half-drunken wits no doubt weighing the plausibility of my answer. At last—
“If that be all, what cause had you to hide?” he asked me shrewdly.
“One of your candles fell over and awakened you,” said I. “I feared you might resent my presence, and so I hid.”
“You came not near the table?” he inquired. “You saw nothing of the paper that I held? Nay, by the Host! I’ll take no risks. You were born ’neath an unlucky star, fool; for be your reason for your presence here no more than you assert, you have come in a season that must be fatal to you.”
He set the candle on the table, then carrying his hand to his girdle he withdrew it sharply, and I caught the gleam of a dagger.
In that instant I thought of Mariani waiting above, and like a flash it came to me that if I could outpace this drunken brigand, and, gaining the gallery well ahead of him, transfer that letter to the old man’s hands, I should not die in vain. Cesare Borgia would avenge me, and Madonna Paola, at least, would be safe from this villain. If Mariani could reach Valentino at Faenza, I would answer for it that within four-and-twenty hours Messer Ramiro del’ Orca would be the banner on that ghastly beam that he facetiously dubbed his flagstaff; and he would be the blackest, dirtiest banner that ever yet had fluttered there.
The thought conceived in the twinkling of an eye, I acted upon without a second’s hesitation. Ere Ramiro had taken his first step towards me, I had sprung to the stairs and I was leaping up them with the frantic speed of one upon whose heels death is treading closely.
A singular, fierce joy was blent with my measure of fear; a joy at the thought that even now, in this extremity, I was outwitting him, for never a doubt had he that the burnt paper he had found on the table was all that was left of Vitelli’s letter. His fears were that I might have read it, but never a suspicion crossed his mind of such a trick as I had played upon him.
So I sped on, the gigantic Ramiro blundering after me, panting and blaspheming, for although powerful, his bulk and the wine he had taken left him no nimbleness. The distance between us widened, and if only Mariani would have the presence of mind to wait for me at the mouth of the passage, all would be as I could wish it before his dagger found my heart.
I was assuring myself of this when in the dark I stumbled, and striking my legs against a stair I hurtled forward. I recovered almost immediately, but, in my frenzy of haste to make up for the instant lost, I stumbled a second time ere I was well upon my feet.