‘But you are French?’

‘Yes.’

‘When did you arrive?’

‘To-night.’

‘How?’

‘In a lugger from Dover.’

‘The fellow is speaking the truth,’ growled Toussac.  ’Yes, I’ll say that for him, that he is speaking the truth.  We saw the lugger, and someone was landed from it just after the boat that brought me over pushed off.’

I remembered that boat, which had been the first thing which I had seen upon the coast of France.  How little I had thought what it would mean to me!

And now my advocate began asking questions—­vague, useless questions—­in a slow, hesitating fashion which set Toussac grumbling.  This cross-examination appeared to me to be a useless farce; and yet there was a certain eagerness and intensity in my questioner’s manner which gave me the assurance that he had some end in view.  Was it merely that he wished to gain time?  Time for what?  And then, suddenly, with that quick perception which comes upon those whose nerves are strained by an extremity of danger, I became convinced that he really was awaiting something—­that he was tense with expectation.  I read it upon his drawn face, upon his sidelong head with his ear scooped into his hand, above all in his twitching, restless eyes.  He expected an interruption, and he was talking, talking, talking, in order to gain time for it.  I was as sure of it as if he had whispered his secret in my ear, and down in my numb, cold heart a warm little spring of hope began to bubble and run.

But Toussac had chafed at all this word-fencing, and now with an oath he broke in upon our dialogue.

‘I have had enough of this!’ he cried.  ’It is not for child’s play of this sort that I risked my head in coming over here.  Have we nothing better to talk about than this fellow?  Do you suppose I came from London to listen to your fine phrases?  Have done with it, I say, and get to business.’

‘Very good,’ said my champion.  ’There’s an excellent little cupboard here which makes as fine a prison as one could wish for.  Let us put him in here, and pass on to business.  We can deal with him when we have finished.’

‘And have him overhear all that we say,’ said Lesage.

‘I don’t know what the devil has come over you,’ cried Toussac, turning suspicious eyes upon my protector.  ’I never knew you squeamish before, and certainly you were not backward in the affair of the man from Bow Street.  This fellow has our secret, and he must either die, or we shall see him at our trial.  What is the sense of arranging a plot, and then at the last moment turning a man loose who will ruin us all?  Let us snap his neck and have done with it.’

The great hairy hands were stretched towards me again, but Lesage had sprung suddenly to his feet.  His face had turned very white, and he stood listening with his forefinger up and his head slanted.  It was a long, thin, delicate hand, and it was quivering like a leaf in the wind.