Chapter 10. The Marplot

The Path of the King

by John Buchan

At a little after six o'clock on the evening of Saturday, 12th
October, in the year 1678, the man known commonly as Edward Copshaw
came to a halt opposite the narrow entry of the Savoy, just west of
the Queen's palace of Somerset House. He was a personage of many
names. In the register of the Benedictine lay-brothers he had been
entered as James Singleton. Sundry Paris tradesmen had known him as
Captain Edwards, and at the moment were longing to know more of him.
In a certain secret and tortuous correspondence he figured as
Octavius, and you may still read his sprawling script in the Record
Office. His true name, which was Nicholas Lovel, was known at Weld
House, at the White Horse Tavern, and the town lodgings of my lords
Powis and Bellasis, but had you asked for him by that name at these
quarters you would have been met by a denial of all knowledge. For it
was a name which for good reasons he and his patrons desired to have
forgotten.

He was a man of not yet forty, furtive, ill-looking and lean to
emaciation. In complexion he was as swarthy as the King, and his
feverish black eyes were set deep under his bushy brows. A badly
dressed peruke concealed his hair. His clothes were the remnants of
old finery, well cut and of good stuff, but patched and threadbare.
He wore a sword, and carried a stout rustic staff. The weather was
warm for October, and the man had been walking fast, for, as he
peered through the autumn brume into the dark entry, he mopped his
face with a dirty handkerchief.

The exercise had brought back his ailment and he shivered
violently. Punctually as autumn came round he had these fevers, the
legacy of a year once spent in the Pisan marshes. He had doped
himself with Jesuits' powder got from a woman of Madame Carwell's, so
that he was half deaf and blind. Yet in spite of the drug the fever
went on burning.

But to anyone looking close it would have seemed that he had
more to trouble him than a malarial bout. The man was patently in an
extreme terror. His lantern-jaw hung as loose as if it had been
broken. His lips moved incessantly. He gripped savagely at his staff,
and next moment dropped it. He fussed with the hilt of his sword. . .
. He was a coward, and yet had come out to do murder.

It had taken real panic to bring him to the point. Throughout
his tattered life he had run many risks, but never a peril so instant
as this. As he had followed his quarry that afternoon his mind had
been full of broken memories. Bitter thoughts they were, for luck had
not been kind to him. A childhood in cheap lodgings in London and a
dozen French towns, wherever there was a gaming-table and pigeons for
his father to pluck. Then drunken father and draggletailed mother had
faded from the scene, and the boy had been left to a life of odd jobs
and fleeting patrons. His name was against him, for long before he
reached manhood the King had come back to his own, and his
grandfather's bones had jangled on a Tyburn gibbet. There was no hope
for one of his family, though Heaven knew his father had been a stout
enough Royalist. At eighteen the boy had joined the Roman Church, and
at twenty relapsed to the fold of Canterbury. But his
bread-and-butter lay with Rome, and in his trade few questions were
asked about creed provided the work were done. He had had streaks of
fortune, for there had been times when he lay soft and ate delicately
and scattered money. But nothing lasted. He had no sooner made
purchase with a great man and climbed a little than the scaffolding
fell from his feet. He thought meanly of human nature for in his
profess he must cringe or snarl, always the undermost dog. Yet he had
some liking for the priests, who had been kind to him, and there was
always a glow in his heart for the pale wife who dwelt with his child
in the attic in Billingsgate. Under happier circumstances Mr.
Nicholas Lovel might have shone with the domestic virtues.

Business had been good of late, if that could ever be called
good which was undertaken under perpetual fear. He had been given
orders which took him into Whig circles, and had made progress among
the group of the King's Head Tavern. He had even won an entrance into
my Lord Shaftesbury's great house in Aldersgate Street. He was there
under false colours, being a spy of the other camp, but something in
him found itself at home among the patriots. A resolve had been
growing to cut loose from his old employers and settle down among the
Whigs in comparative honesty. It was the winning cause, he thought,
and he longed to get his head out of the kennels. . . . But that had
happened yesterday which scattered his fine dreams and brought him
face to face with terror. God's curse on that ferrety Justice, Sir
Edmund Berry Godfrey.

He had for some time had his eye on the man. The year before he
had run across him in Montpelier, being then engaged in a very
crooked business, and had fancied that the magistrate had also his
eye on him. Taught by long experience to watch potential enemies, he
had taken some trouble over the lean high-beaked dignitary. Presently
he had found out curious things. The austere Protestant was a friend
of the Duke's man, Ned Coleman, and used to meet him at Colonel
Weldon's house. This hinted at blackmailable stuff in the magistrate,
so Lovel took to haunting his premises in Hartshorn Lane by Charing
Cross, but found no evidence which pointed to anything but a
prosperous trade in wood and sea-coal. Faggots, but not the
treasonable kind! Try as he might, he could-get no farther with that
pillar of the magistracy, my Lord Danly's friend, the beloved of
Aldermen. He hated his solemn face, his prim mouth, his condescending
stoop. Such a man was encased in proof armour of public esteem, and
he heeded Mr. Lovel no more than the rats in the gutter.

But the day before had come a rude awakening. All this talk of a
Popish plot, discovered by the Salamanca Doctor, promised a good
harvest to Mr. Lovel. He himself had much to tell and more to invent.
Could he but manage it discreetly, he might assure his fortune with
the Whigs and get to his feet at last. God knew it was time, for the
household in the Billingsgate attic was pretty threadbare. His busy
brain had worked happily on the plan. He would be the innocent,
cursed from childhood with undesired companions, who would suddenly
awaken in horror to the guilt of things he had not understood. There
would be a welcome for a well-informed penitent. . . . But he must
move slowly and at his own time. . . . And now he was being himself
hustled into the dock, perhaps soon to the gallows.

For the afternoon before he had been sent for by Godfrey and
most searchingly examined. He had thought himself the spy, when all
the while he had been the spied upon. The accursed Justice knew
everything. He knew a dozen episodes each enough to hang a poor man.
He knew of Mr. Lovel's dealings with the Jesuits Walsh and Phayre,
and of a certain little hovel in Battersea whose annals were not for
the public ear. Above all, he knew of the great Jesuit consult in
April at the Duke of York's house. That would have mattered
little--indeed the revelation of it was part of Mr. Lovel's
plans--but he knew Mr. Lovel s precise connection with it, and had
damning evidence to boot. The spy shivered when he remembered the
scene in Hartshorn Lane. He had blundered and stuttered and confessed
his alarm by his confusion, while the Justice recited what he had
fondly believed was known only to the Almighty and some few whose
mortal interest it was to be silent. . . . He had been amazed that
he had not been there and then committed to Newgate. He had not gone
home that night, but wandered the streets and slept cold under a
Mairylebone hedge. At first he had thought of flight, but the
recollection of his household detained him. He would not go under.
One pompous fool alone stood between him and safety--perhaps fortune.
Long before morning he had resolved that Godfrey should die.

He had expected a difficult task, but lo! it was unbelievably
easy. About ten o'clock that day he had found Sir Edmund in the
Strand. He walked hurriedly as if on urgent business, and Lovel had
followed him up through Covent Garden, across the Oxford road, and
into the Marylebone fields. There the magistrate's pace had
slackened, and he had loitered like a truant schoolboy among the
furze and briars. His stoop had deepened, his head was sunk on his
breast, his hands twined behind him.

Now was the chance for the murderer lurking in the brambles. It
would be easy to slip behind and give him the sword-point. But Mr.
Lovel tarried. It may have been compunction, but more likely it was
fear. It was also curiosity, for the magistrate's face, as he passed
Lovel's hiding-place, was distraught and melancholy. Here was another
man with bitter thoughts --perhaps with a deadly secret. For a moment
the spy felt a certain kinship.

Whatever the reason he let the morning go by. About two in the
afternoon Godfrey left the fields and struck westward by a
bridle-path that led through the Paddington Woods to the marshes
north of Kensington. He walked slowly, but with an apparent purpose.
Lovel stopped for a moment at the White House, a dirty little hedge
tavern, to swallow a mouthful of ale, and tell a convincing lie to
John Rawson, the innkeeper, in case it should come in handy some day.
Then occurred a diversion. Young Mr. Forset's harriers swept past, a
dozen riders attended by a ragged foot following. They checked by the
path, and in the confusion of the halt Godfrey seemed to vanish. It
was not till close on Paddington village that Mr. Lovel picked him up
again. He was waiting for the darkness, for he knew that he could
never do what he purposed in cold daylight. He hoped that the
magistrate would make for Kensington, for that was a lonely path.

But Sir Edmund seemed to be possessed of a freakish devil. No
sooner was he in Paddington than, after buying a glass of milk from a
milk-woman, he set off citywards again by the Oxford road. Here there
were many people, foot travellers and coaches, and Mr. Lovel began to
fear for his chance. But at Tyburn Godfrey struck into the fields and
presently was in the narrow lane called St. Martin's Hedges, which
led to Charing Cross. Now was the occasion. The dusk was falling, and
a light mist was creeping up from Westminster. Lovel quickened his
steps, for the magistrate was striding at a round pace. Then came
mischance. First one, then another of the Marylebone cow-keepers
blocked the lane with their driven beasts. The place became as public
as Bartholomew's Fair. Before he knew it he was at Charing Cross.

He was now in a foul temper. He cursed his weakness in the
morning, when fate had given him every opportunity. He was in despair
too. His case was hopeless unless he struck soon. If Godfrey returned
to Hartshorn Lane he himself would be in Newgate on the morrow. . . .
Fortunately the strange man did not seem to want to go home. He moved
east along the Strand, Lovel a dozen yards behind him.

Out from the dark Savoy entry ran a woman, screaming, and with
her hair flying. She seized on Godfrey and clutched his knees. There
was a bloody fray inside, in which her husband fought against odds.
The watch was not to be found. Would he, the great magistrate,
intervene? The very sight of his famous face would quell riot.

Sir Edmund looked up and down the street, pinched his chin and
peered down the precipitous Savoy causeway. Whatever the burden on
his soul he did not forget his duty.

"Show me," he said, and followed her into the gloom.

Lovel outside stood for a second hesitating. His chance had
come. His foe had gone of his own will into the place in all England
where murder could be most safely done. But now that the moment had
come at last, he was all of a tremble and his breath choked. Only the
picture, always horribly clear in his mind, of a gallows dark against
a pale sky and the little fire beneath where the entrails of traitors
were burned--a nightmare which had long ridden him--nerved him to the
next step. "His life or mine," he told himself, as he groped his way
into a lane as steep, dank, and black as the sides of a well.

For some twenty yards he stumbled in an air thick with offal and
garlic. He heard steps ahead, the boots of the doomed magistrate and
the slipshod pattens of the woman. Then. they stopped; his quarry
seemed to be ascending a stair on the right. It was a wretched
tenement of wood, two hundred years old, once a garden house attached
to the Savoy palace. Lovel scrambled up some rickety steps and found
himself on the rotten planks of a long passage, which was lit by a
small window giving to the west. He heard the sound of a man slipping
at the other end, and something like an oath. Then a door slammed
violently, and the place shook. After that it was quiet. Where was
the bloody fight that Godfrey had been brought to settle?

It was very dark there; the window in the passage was only a
square of misty grey. Lovel felt eerie, a strange mood for an
assassin. Magistrate and woman seemed to have been spirited away. . .
. He plucked up courage and continued, one hand on the wall on his
left. Then a sound broke the silence--a scuffle, and the long grate
of something heavy dragged on a rough floor. Presently his fingers
felt a door. The noise was inside that door. There were big cracks in
the panelling through which an eye could look, but all was dark
within. There were human beings moving there, and speaking softly.
Very gingerly he tried the hasp, but it was fastened firm inside.

Suddenly someone in the room struck a flint and lit a lantern.
Lovel set his eyes to a crack and stood very still. The woman had
gone, and the room held three men. One lay on the floor with a coarse
kerchief, such as grooms wear, knotted round his throat. Over him
bent a man in a long coat with a cape, a man in a dark peruke, whose
face was clear in the lantern's light. Lovel knew him for one Bedloe,
a led-captain and cardsharper, whom he had himself employed on
occasion. The third man stood apart and appeared from his
gesticulations to be speaking rapidly. He wore his own sandy hair,
and every line of his mean freckled face told of excitement and fear.
Him also Lovel recognised--Carstairs, a Scotch informer who had once
made a handsome living through spying on conventicles, but had now
fallen into poverty owing to conducting an affair of Buckingham's
with a brutality which that fastidious nobleman had not bargained
for. . . . Lovel rubbed his eyes and looked again. He knew likewise
the man on the floor. It was Sir Edmund Godfrey, and Sir Edmund
Godfrey was dead.

The men were talking. "No blood-letting," said Bedloe "This must
be a dry job. Though, by God, I wish I could stick my knife into
him--once for Trelawney, once for Frewen, and a dozen times for
myself. Through this swine I have festered a twelvemonth in Little
Ease."

Lovel's first thought, as he stared, was an immense relief. His
business had been done for him, and he had escaped the guilt of it.
His second, that here lay a chance of fair profit. Godfrey was a
great man, and Bedloe and Carstairs were the seediest of rogues. He
might make favor for himself with the Government if he had them
caught red-handed. It would help his status in Aldersgate Street. . .
. But he must act at once or the murderers would be gone. He tiptoed
back along the passage, tumbled down the crazy steps, and ran up the
steep entry to where he saw a glimmer of light from the Strand.

At the gate he all but fell into the arms of a man--a powerful
fellow, for it was like running against a brick wall. Two strong arms
gripped Lovel by the shoulder, and a face looked into his. There was
little light in the street, but the glow from the window of a Court
perruquier was sufficient to reveal the features. Lovel saw a
gigantic face, with a chin so long that the mouth seemed to be only
half-way down it. Small eyes, red and fiery, were set deep under a
beetling forehead. The skin was a dark purple, and the wig framing it
was so white and fleecy that the man had the appearance of a
malevolent black-faced sheep.

Lovel gasped, as he recognised the celebrated Salamanca Doctor.
He was the man above all others whom he most wished to see.

"Dr. Oates!" he cried. "There's bloody work in the Savoy. I was
passing through a minute agone and I saw that noble Justice, Sir
Edmund Berry Godfrey, lie dead, and his murderers beside the body.
Quick, let us get the watch and take them red-handed."

The big paws, like a gorilla's, were withdrawn from his
shoulders. The purple complexion seemed to go nearly black, and the
wide mouth opened as if to bellow. But the sound which emerged was
only a whisper.

"By the maircy of Gaad we will have 'em! . . .

A maist haarrid and unnaitural craime. I will take 'em with my
own haands. Here is one who will help."

And he turned to a man who had come up and who looked like a
city tradesman. "Lead on, honest fellow, and we will see justice
done. 'Tis pairt of the bloody Plaat. . . . I foresaw it. I warned
Sir Edmund, but he flouted me. Ah, poor soul, he has paid for his
unbelief."

Lovel, followed by Oates and the other whom he called Prance,
dived again into the darkness. Now he had no fears. He saw himself
acclaimed with the Doctor as the saviour of the nation, and the door
of Aldersgate Street open at his knocking. The man Prance produced a
lantern, and lighted them up the steps and into the tumbledown
passage. Fired with a sudden valour, Lovel drew his sword and led the
way to the sinister room. The door was open, and the place lay empty,
save for the dead body.

Oates stood beside it, looking, with his bandy legs great
shoulders, and bull neck, like some forest baboon.

"Oh, maist haunourable and noble victim!" he cried. "England
will maarn you, and the spawn of Raam will maarn you, for by this
deed they have rigged for thaimselves the gallows. Maark ye, Sir
Edmund is the proto-martyr of this new fight for the Praatestant
faith. He has died that the people may live, and by his death Gaad
has given England the sign she required. . . . Ah, Prance, how
little Tony Shaston will exult in our news! 'Twill be to him like a
bone to a cur-dog to take his ainemies thus red-haanded."

By your leave, sir," said Lovel, "those same enemies have
escaped us. I saw them here five minutes since, but they have gone to
earth. What say you to a hue-and-cry--though this Savoy is a snug
warrin to hide vermin."

Oates seemed to be in no hurry. He took the lantern from Prance
and scrutinised Lovel's face with savage intensity.

"Ye saw them, ye say. . . . I think, friend, I have seen ye
before, and I doubt in no good quaarter. There's a Paapist air about
you."

"If you have seen me, 'twas in the house of my Lord Shaftesbury,
whom I have the honour to serve," said Lovel stoutly.

"Whoy, that is an haanest house enough. Whaat like were the
villains, then? Jaisuits, I'll warrant? Foxes from St. Omer's
airth?"

"They were two common cutthroats whose names I know."

"Tools, belike. Fingers of the Paape's hand. . . . Ye seem to
have a good acquaintance among rogues, Mr. Whaat's-you-name."

The man Prance had disappeared, and Lovel suddenly saw his
prospects less bright. The murderers were being given a chance to
escape, and to his surprise he found himself in a fret to get after
them. Oates had clearly no desire for their capture, and the reason
flashed on his mind. The murder had come most opportunely for him,
and he sought to lay it at Jesuit doors. It would ill suit his plans
if only two common rascals were to swing for it. Far better let it
remain a mystery open to awful guesses. Omne ignotum pro horrifico. .
. . Lovel's temper was getting the better of his prudence, and the
sight of this monstrous baboon with his mincing speech stirred in him
a strange abhorrence.

"I can bear witness that the men who did the deed were no more
Jesuits than you. One is just out of Newgate, and the other is a
blackguard Scot late dismissed the Duke of Buckingham's service."

"Ye lie," and Oates' rasping voice was close to his ear. "'Tis
an incraidible tale. Will ye outface me, who alone discovered the
Plaat, and dispute with me on high poalicy? . . . Now I come to look
at it, ye have a true Jaisuit face. I maind of ye at St. Omer. I
judge ye an accoamplice . . ."

At that moment Prance returned and with him another, a man in a
dark peruke, wearing a long coat with a cape. Lovel's breath went
from him as he recognised Bedloe.

"There is the murderer," he cried in a sudden fury "I saw him
handle the body. I charge you to hold him.

Bedloe halted and looked at Oates, who nodded. Then he strode up
to Lovel and took him by the throat

"Withdraw your words, you dog," he said, "or I will cut your
throat. I have but this moment landed at the river stairs and heard
of this horrid business. If you say you have ever seen me before you
lie most foully. Quick, you ferret. Will Bedloe suffers no man to
charge his honour."

The strong hands on his neck, the fierce eyes of the bravo,
brought back Lovel's fear and with it his prudence. He saw very
plainly the game, and he realised that he must assent to it. His
contrition was deep and voluble.

"I withdraw," he stammered, "and humbly crave pardon. I have
never seen this honest gentleman before."

"But ye saw this foul murder, and though the laight was dim ye
saw the murderers, and they had the Jaisuitical air?"

Oates' menacing voice had more terror for Lovel than Bedloe's
truculence. "Beyond doubt," he replied.

"Whoy, that is so far good," and the Doctor laughed. "Ye will be
helped later to remember the names for the benefit of his Maajesty's
Court. . . . 'Tis time we set to work. Is the place quiet?"

"As the grave, doctor," said Prance.

"Then I will unfold to you my pairpose. This noble magistrate is
foully murdered by pairsons unknown as yet, but whom this haanest man
will swear to have been disguised Jaisuits. Now in the sairvice of
Goad and the King 'tis raight to pretermit no aiffort to bring the
guilty to justice. The paiple of England are already roused to a holy
fairvour, and this haarrid craime will be as the paistol flash to the
powder caask. But that the craime may have its full effaict on the
paapulace 'tis raight to take some trouble with the staging. 'Tis
raight so to dispose of the boady that the complaicity of the
Paapists will be clear to every doubting fool. I, Taitus Oates, take
upon myself this responsibility, seeing that under Goad I am the
chosen ainstrument for the paiple's salvation. To Soamersait Haase
with it, say I, which is known for a haaunt of the
paapistically-minded. . . . The postern ye know of is open, Mr.
Prance?"

"I have seen to it," said the man, who seemed to conduct himself
in this wild business with the decorum of a merchant in his shop.

"Up with him, then," said Oates.

Prance and Bedloe swung the corpse on their shoulders and moved
out, while the doctor, gripping Lovel's arm like a vice, followed at
a little distance.

The Savoy was very quiet that night, and very dark. The few
loiterers who observed the procession must have shrugged their
shoulders and turned aside, zealous only to keep out of trouble. Such
sights were not uncommon in the Savoy. They entered a high ruinous
house on the east side, and after threading various passages reached
a door which opened on a flight of broken steps where it was hard for
more than one to pass at a time. Lovel heard the carriers of the dead
grunting as they squeezed up with their burden. At the top another
door gave on an outhouse in the yard of Somerset House between the
stables and the west water-gate. . . . Lovel, as he stumbled after
them with Oates' bulk dragging at his arm, was in a confusion of mind
such as his mean time-serving life had never known.

He was in mortal fear, and yet his quaking heart would suddenly
be braced by a gust of anger. He knew he was a rogue, but there were
limits to roguery, and something in him--conscience, maybe, or
forgotten gentility--sickened at this outrage. He had an impulse to
defy them, to gain the street and give the alarm to honest men. These
fellows were going to construct a crime in their own way which would
bring death to the innocent. . . . Mr. Lovel trembled at himself, and
had to think hard on his family in the Billingsgate attic to get back
to his common-sense. He would not be believed if he spoke out. Oates
would only swear that he was the culprit, and Oates had the ear of
the courts and the mob. Besides , he had too many dark patches in his
past. It was not for such as he to be finicking.

The body was pushed under an old truckle-bed which stood in the
corner, and a mass of frails, such as gardeners use, flung over it
for concealment. Oates rubbed his hands.

"The good work goes merrily," he said. "Sir Edmund dead, and for
a week the good fawk of London are a-fevered. Then the haarrid
discovery, and such a Praatestant uprising as will shake the
maightiest from his pairch. Wonderful are Goad's ways and surprising
His jaidgements! Every step must be weighed, since it is the Laard's
business. Five days we must give this city to grow uneasy, and then .
. . The boady will be safe here?"

"I alone have the keys," said Prance.

The doctor counted on his thick fingers.
"Monday--Tuesday--Waidnesday--aye, Waidneday's the day. Captain
Bedloe, ye have chairge of the removal. Before dawn by the
water-gate, and then a chair and a trusty man to cairry it to the
plaace of discovery. Ye have appainted the spoat?"

"Any ditch in the Marylebone fields," said Bedloe.

"And before ye remove it--on the Tuesday naight haply--ye will
run the boady through with his swaard--Sir Edmund's swaard."

"So you tell me," said Bedloe gruffly, "but I see no reason in
it. The foolishest apothecary will be able tell how the man met his
death."

Oates grinned and laid his finger to his nose. "Ye laack
subtelty, fraiend. The priests of Baal must be met with their own
waipons. Look ye. This poor man is found with his swaard in his
braist. He has killed himself, says the fool. Not so, say the
apothecaries. Then why the swaard" asks the coroner. Because of the
daivilish cunning of his murderers, says Doctor Taitus Oates. A clear
proof that the Jaisuits are in it, says every honest Praatistant.
D'ye take me?"

Bedloe declared with oaths his admiration of the Doctor's wit,
and good humour filled the hovel; All but Lovel, who once again was
wrestling with something elemental in him that threatened to ruin
every thing. He remembered the bowed stumbling figure that had gone
before him in the Marylebone meadows. Then he had been its enemy; now
by a queer contortion of the mind he thought of himself as the only
protector of that cold clay under the bed--honoured in life, but in
death a poor pawn in a rogue's cause. He stood a little apart from
the others near the door, and his eyes sought it furtively. He was
not in the plot, and yet the plotters did not trouble about him. They
assumed his complaisance. Doubtless they knew his shabby past.

He was roused by Oates' voice. The Doctor was arranging his plan
of campaign with gusto. Bedloe was to disappear to the West Country
till the time came for him to offer his evidence. Prance was to go
about his peaceful trade till Bedloe gave him the cue. It was a
masterly stratagem--Bedloe to start the ball, Prance to be accused as
accomplice and then on his own account to give the other scoundrel
corroboration.

"Attend, you sir," the doctor shouted to Lovel. "Ye will be
called to swear to the murderers whom this haanest man will name. If
ye be a true Praatestant ye will repeat the laisson I taich you. If
not, ye will be set down as one of the villains and the good fawk of
this city will tear the limbs from ye at my nod. Be well advaised, my
friend, for I hold ye in my haand." And Oates raised a great paw and
opened and shut it.

Lovel mumbled assent. Fear had again descended on him. He heard
dimly the Doctor going over the names of those to be accused.

"Ye must bring in one of the sairvants of this place," he said.
"Some common paarter, who has no friends."

"Trust me," said Prance. "I will find a likely fellow among the
Queen's household. I have several in my mind for the honour."

"Truly the plaace is a nest of Paapists," said Oates. "And not
such as you, Mr. Prance, who putt England before the Paape. Ye are
worth a score of Praatestants to the good caause, and it will be
remaimbered. Be assured it will be remaimbered. . . . Ye are clear
about the main villains? Walsh, you say, and Pritchard and the man
called Le Fevre?"

"The last most of all. But they are sharp-nosed as hounds, and
unless we go wiarily they will give us the slip, and we must fall
back on lesser game."

"Le Fevre." Oates mouthed the name. "The Queen's confessor. I
was spit upon by him at St. Omer, and would waipe out the affront. A
dog of a Frainch priest! A man I have long abhaarred."

"So also have I." Prance had venom in his level voice. "But he
is no Frenchman. He is English as you--a Phayre out of
Huntingdon."

The name penetrated Lovel's dulled wits. Phayre! It was the one
man who in his father's life had shown him unselfish kindness. Long
ago in Paris this Phayre had been his teacher, had saved him from
starvation, had treated him with a gentleman's courtesy. Even his
crimes had not estranged this friend. Phayre had baptized his child,
and tended his wife when he was in hiding. But a week ago he had
spoken a kindly word in the Mall to one who had rarely a kind word
from an honest man.

That day had been to the spy a revelation of odd corners in his
soul. He had mustered in the morning the resolution to kill one man.
Now he discovered a scruple which bade him at all risks avert the
killing of another. He perceived very clearly what the decision
meant--desperate peril, perhaps ruin and death. He dare not delay,
for in a little he would be too deep in the toils. He must escape and
be first with the news of Godfrey's death in some potent quarter.
Buckingham, who was a great prince. Or Danby. Or the King himself. .
. .

The cunning of a lifetime failed him in that moment. He slipped
through the door, but his coat caught in a splinter of wood, and the
rending of it gave the alarm. As with quaking heart he ran up the
silent stable-yard towards the Strand gate he felt close on him the
wind of the pursuit. In the dark he slipped on a patch of horse-dung
and was down. Something heavy fell atop of him, and the next second a
gross agony tore the breath from him.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Five minutes later Bedloe was unknotting a coarse kerchief and
stuffing it into his pocket. It was the same that had strangled
Godfrey

"A good riddance," said Oates. "The fool had seen too much and
would have proved but a saarry witness. Now by the mairciful
dispensation of Goad he has ceased to trouble us. Ye know him,
Captain Bedloe?"

A Papistical cur, and white-livered at that," the bravo
answered.

"And his boady? It must be praamptly disposed of."

"An easy task. There is the Savoy water-gate and in an hour the
tide will run. He has no friends to inquire after him."

Oates rubbed his hands and cast his eyes upward. Great are the
doings of the Laard," he said, "and wonderful in our saight!"