“Well?” Rollmar demanded sharply, as he read the soldier’s face. “You have failed?”
“I dare not say we have, Excellency,” he answered, determined to make the best of the business. “I should not like to swear that our man is not lying at the bottom of the lake with a bullet through him.”
In Rollmar’s searching eyes there was a gleam of savage satisfaction. “So? But there is a doubt about it, eh?”
“We lost the fellow in the darkness,” Ompertz explained. “But that he went into the lake is certain, and almost so that he never came out again. The water of the Mirror Pool is deadly cold, Excellency: he would need all his hot blood——”
The Chancellor stopped him by an impatient gesture. “I want facts, not theories, from a soldier. And the fact is you have bungled.”
“More likely that we have saved your Excellency the trouble of a private execution,” Ompertz rejoined sturdily. “Pesqui swears he hit him.”
The Chancellor’s contemptuous exclamation showed that he did not accept that worthy’s view of the matter. “What of the Princess?” he demanded.
“The Princess thought so too,” the soldier replied imperturbably, “for she fell into a swoon. It was that which kept me from going to see whether her lover had been accounted for.”
“And in the meantime he got clear away,” Rollmar said in a sharp tone of annoyance. “What did the two fools that were with you?”
Ompertz gave a shrug. “They hurried round the bank, one on each side, and searched thoroughly.”