“Body of God!” he swore aloud, “it is well that I had read it a dozen times.  Better that it should have been burnt than that someone should have read it whilst I slept.”

The idea of such a possibility seemed to rouse him to fresh action, for seizing the fallen candle and replacing it in its socket, he rose once more, and holding it high above his head he looked about the hall.

The light it shed may have been feeble, and the shadows about my buffet thick; but, as I have said, my doublet was open, and some ray of that weak candlelight must have found out the white shirt that was showing at my breast, for with a sudden cry he pushed back his chair and took a step towards me, no doubt intent upon investigating that white something that he saw gleaming there.

I waited for no more.  I had no fancy to be caught in that corner, utterly at his mercy.  I stood up suddenly.

“Magnificent, it is I,” I announced, with a calm and boundless effrontery.

The boldness of it may have staggered him a little, for he paused, although his eyes were glowing horribly with the frenzy that possessed him, the half of which was drunkenness, the other fear and wrath lest I should have seen his treacherous communication from Vitelli.

“What make you here?” he questioned threateningly.

“I thirsted, Excellency,” I answered glibly.  “I thirsted, and I bethought me of this buffet where you keep your wine.”

He continued to eye me, some six paces off, his half-drunken wits no doubt weighing the plausibility of my answer.  At last—­

“If that be all, what cause had you to hide?” he asked me shrewdly.

“One of your candles fell over and awakened you,” said I.  “I feared you might resent my presence, and so I hid.”

“You came not near the table?” he inquired.  “You saw nothing of the paper that I held?  Nay, by the Host!  I’ll take no risks.  You were born ’neath an unlucky star, fool; for be your reason for your presence here no more than you assert, you have come in a season that must be fatal to you.”

He set the candle on the table, then carrying his hand to his girdle he withdrew it sharply, and I caught the gleam of a dagger.

In that instant I thought of Mariani waiting above, and like a flash it came to me that if I could outpace this drunken brigand, and, gaining the gallery well ahead of him, transfer that letter to the old man’s hands, I should not die in vain.  Cesare Borgia would avenge me, and Madonna Paola, at least, would be safe from this villain.  If Mariani could reach Valentino at Faenza, I would answer for it that within four-and-twenty hours Messer Ramiro del’ Orca would be the banner on that ghastly beam that he facetiously dubbed his flagstaff; and he would be the blackest, dirtiest banner that ever yet had fluttered there.

The thought conceived in the twinkling of an eye, I acted upon without a second’s hesitation.  Ere Ramiro had taken his first step towards me, I had sprung to the stairs and I was leaping up them with the frantic speed of one upon whose heels death is treading closely.