“What do you mean by that?”

“That I saw you at your craven work just after the Alma; you ought to have been shot then.  The world would have been well rid of a miscreant.”

“Pretty language, truly, Mr. Gascoigne!  I must strive to deserve it.”

“What are you going to do with me?”

“I am not sure.  Only do not hope for mercy.  You know too much.  I might make away with you at once—­”

“But why spill blood?” he went on, musing aloud.  “The guillotine will do your business in due course if I hand you over to the law.  That will be best, safest; the most complete riddance, perhaps.”

There was a pause.

“You see you are altogether in my power,” said Ledantec, “either way.  But I am not unreasonable.  I am prepared to spare you—­for the present,” he said, with an evil smile—­“only for the present, and according as you may behave.”

“On what conditions will you spare me—­for the present?” asked Hyde, elated at the unexpected chance thus given him.

“Tell me how you came to know of this address.  Who sent you here?”

“Valetta Joe, the Maltese baker at Kadikoi.”

“Describe him to me,” asked Ledantec, to try Hyde.

Hyde had seen Joe more than once in his rides through the hut-town, and his answer was perfectly satisfactory.

“Did he send any message?”

“Just what I have told you.  I was to let you know of his arrest and of the danger you would run.”

Ledantec was deceived by the straightforward and unhesitating way in which Hyde told his story.

“It may be so.  At any rate, the warning must not be despised.  Whether or not you are to be trusted remains to be seen.  But I will keep you safe for a day or two longer and see what turns up.  In any case you cannot do much mischief to Cyprienne while shut fast here.”

“Cyprienne?” said Hyde, quite innocently.

“I am quite aware of one reason that brought you to Paris, but, as I have said, you cannot well execute your threats so long as we hold you tight.”

Hyde shook his head as though these remarks were completely unintelligible.  But he laughed within himself at the thought that he had already outwitted both Cyprienne and her accomplice, and that, wherever he was, a prisoner or at large, events would work out her discomfiture without him.

He had no fears for himself.  They had promised him at the British Embassy that he should be sought out if he did not reappear within three days.  Besides, the French police had their eyes on the house.  The tables would presently be turned upon his captors in a way that they little expected.

When, therefore, he was led by Ledantec’s orders into a little back room dimly lighted by a window looking on to a blank wall, he went like a lamb.  But physically he was not particularly comfortable; there were pleasanter ways of spending the day than tied hand and foot to the legs of a bedstead, and Ledantec’s farewell speech was calculated to disturb his equanimity.