"He'll be safe enough in there," said Captain Dove vindictively, as he held up the match he had struck while Slyne, with fumbling fingers, drew its rusty iron outside bolt across the door of the cell. "And it will be easy to get him down the tunnel to the water-gate, too."
"Can anyone get in by the water-gate?" asked Slyne in a breathless whisper.
"I have the key in my pocket," Captain Dove answered shortly, and drew the blind panel back into place as they regained the gun-room together.
There, he made at once for the half-empty decanter upon the table. But Slyne sat down before the fire again, with bent head, as if utterly crushed.
It was self-evident that he had come to believe implicitly in Sallie's right to the new identity he had bestowed upon her, had never doubted that the proofs on which that belief had been based were anything but genuine. He could scarcely doubt now that Captain Dove had hoodwinked him from first to last, that Farish M'Kissock's story was the real truth of the matter. And, thus in a moment confronted with the ruinous outcome of his credulity, he could not yet bring his mind to bear on anything but the utter eclipse of all his own golden dreams.
"And so—that fellow Carthew will be Earl of Jura," he said suddenly, and looked up at Captain Dove with a hell of hate aflame behind his dull eyes. "And you've been lying to me all along," he said, in a still, dispassionate voice.
Captain Dove, back in his own chair, better pleased with himself, paused to consider before replying. He had been investigating the pantry and found out how Farish M'Kissock had come there.
"You're wrong, both times," he at length remarked. "I've told you nothing that wasn't the truth. All I've said about Sallie, I can prove up to the hilt. And, anyhow, you've been managing the whole business. You've told me often enough not to butt in! You can't blame me for any mistake that's been made.
"And, what's more," he went on, marshalling his ideas, "it remains to be proved that there has been any mistake. You're surely not going to take the mere word of a fellow like Farish for that—a mutinous second mate I had to maroon to get rid of him. Anyhow, if you're going to lie down and die at his orders, I'm not. D'ye see?"
Slyne drew a shaky hand across a damp forehead. He was obviously all unstrung.