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 Marylebone 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 warren 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 warily 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!”