“It is all out,” said the priest, “or will be in a day or two. Mr. Oates hath been to Sir Edmund Berry Godfrey, the Westminster magistrate, with the whole of his pretended information—his forty-three heads to which he hath added now thirty-eight more, and he will be had before the Council to-morrow. Sir Edmund hath told Mr. Coleman his friend, and the Duke’s agent, all that hath been sworn to before him; Mr. Coleman hath told the Duke and hath fled from town to-night; and the Duke has prevailed with the King to have the whole affair before the Council. I think that His Majesty’s way with it would have been the better; but it is too late for that now. Now the matter must all come out; and Sir Edmund hath said sufficient to shew us that it will largely turn upon a consult that our Fathers held here in London, last April, at the White Horse Tavern; for Oates hath mingled truth and falsehood in a very ingenious fashion. He was at St. Omer’s, you know, as a student; and was expelled for an unspeakable crime, as he was expelled from our other college at Valladolid also, for the same cause: so he knows a good deal of our ways. He feigns, too, to be a Doctor of Divinity in Salamanca University; but that is another of his lies, as I know for a truth. What we wish to know, however, is how he knows so much of our movements during these last months; for not one of us has seen him. You have been to and fro to our lodgings a great deal, Mr. Mallock. Have you ever seen, hanging about the streets outside any of them, a fellow with a deformed kind of face—so that his mouth—”
And at that I broke in: for I had never forgotten the man’s face, against whom I had knocked one night in Drury Lane.
“I have seen the very man,” I cried. “He is of middle stature; with a little forehead and nose and a great chin.”
“That is the man,” said Mr. Whitbread. “When did you see him?”
I told them that it was on the night that I found Mrs. Ireland and her daughter come from the play.
“He was standing in the mouth of the passage opposite,” I said, “and watched me as I went in.”
“He will have been watching many nights, I think,” said Mr. Whitbread, “here, and in Duke Street, and at my own lodgings too.”
I asked what he would do that for, if he had his tale already.
“That he may have more truth to stir up with his lies,” said Mr. Whitbread. “He will say who he has seen go in and out; and we shall not be able to deny it.”
He said this very quietly, without any sign of perturbation; and Mr. Ireland was the same. They seemed a little thoughtful only.
“But no harm can come to you,” I cried. “His Majesty hath promised it.”
“Yes: His Majesty hath promised it,” said Mr. Whitbread in such a manner that my heart turned cold; but I said no more on the point.