Ah, God! If he had stayed to take the stuff when it lay in his power! If he had refused to open until he held it in his hand! If, even after that act of folly, he had refused to go until she gave it him! How inconceivable his madness seemed now, his fear of scandal, his thought of others! Others? There was one of whom he dared not think; for when he did his head began to tremble on his shoulders; and he had to clutch the arms of the chair to stay the palsy that shook him. If she, the girl who had destroyed him, thought it was all one to him whom the drug advantaged, or who lived or who died, he would teach her—before he died! He would teach her! There was no extremity of pain or shame she should not taste, accursed witch, accursed thief, as she was! But he must not think of that, or of her, now; or he would die before his time. He had a little time yet, if he were careful, if he were cool, if he were left a brief space to recover himself. A little, a very little time!
Whose were that foot and that voice? Basterga's? The Syndic's eyes gleamed, he raised his head. There was another score he had to pay! His own score, not Baudichon's. Fool, to have left his treasure unguarded for every thieving wench to take! Fool, thrice and again, for putting his neck back into the lion's mouth. Stealthily Blondel pulled the handbell nearer to him and covered it with his cloak. He would have added a weapon, but there was no arm within reach, and while he hesitated between his chair and the door of the small inner room, the outer door opened, and Basterga appeared and advanced, smiling, towards him.
"Your servant, Messer Syndic," he said. "I heard that you had been inquiring for me in my absence, and I am here to place myself at your disposition. You are not looking——" he stopped short, in feigned surprise. "There is nothing wrong, I hope?"
Had the scholar been such a man as Baudichon, Blondel's answer would have been one frenzied shriek of insults and reproaches. But face to face with Basterga's massive quietude, with his giant bulk, with that air, at once masterful and cynical, which proclaimed to those with whom he talked that he gave them but half his mind while reading theirs, the wrath of the smaller man cooled. A moment his lips writhed, without sound; then, "Wrong?" he cried, his voice harsh and broken. "Wrong? All is wrong!"
"You are not well?" Basterga said, eyeing him with concern.
"Well? I shall never be better! Never!" Blondel shrieked. And after a pause, "Curse you!" he added. "It is your doing!"
Basterga stared. He was in the dark as to what had happened, though the Syndic's manner on leaving the bridge had prepared him for something. "My doing, Messer Blondel?" he said. "Why? What have I done?"
"Done?"
"Ay, done! It was not my fault," the scholar continued, with a touch of sternness, "that I could not offer you the remedium on easy terms. Nor mine, that hard as the terms were, you did not accept them. Besides," he continued, slowly and with meaning,
"Terque quaterque redit!