Part 10

From that time he kept a most vigilant watch upon Volmar's doings, by night and day; and it seemed that his patience would be rewarded, for on this last night, having swum the moat, he had found the Spaniard, that was go-between, unattended, and after a fierce struggle had overcome and slain him. Searching among his garments he discovered a leathern pouch, the which, on his slitting it, yielded up a paper. This he bestowed in his pocket, and crossed the moat, but upon climbing the parapet fell clean into the hands of a party of the burgher guard, drawn thither either by the sound of his struggle with the Spaniard, or, as seemed more like, placed there advisedly by Volmar.

While he stood among his captors, protesting and almost persuading them that he was a true man and no traitor, Volmar himself appeared and feigned great astonishment to see him. One of the guard related the cause and manner of the arrest, whereupon the councillor declared roundly that there had been some error, and proposed that the matter should be put to the proof by searching Verhoeff. This being done, the letter was brought to light, the which Volmar then tore open and read by the aid of a dark lantern. He put on a grave and sorrowful look, and gave the letter into the hand of the officer of the guard, and he likewise read it, and immediately cried out that Verhoeff was proved a villainous traitor. Upon this Verhoeff in a fury declared that he had wrested the letter from a Spaniard who had brought it from the city, and from Volmar himself, a saying that provoked a burst of scornful laughter from the officer of the guard and a look of pity from the councillor. The officer commanded that he should be instantly conveyed to the bailey and placed under a strong guard, and Volmar bestowed the letter in his doublet, avouching that he would lay it before the Burgomaster and council on the morrow.

This was the story in brief as Verhoeff told it to me, and I made no doubt he spoke the truth. But I saw that in youthful heat and imprudence he had committed a grievous error in launching an accusation against the councillor, more especially because he was wholly ignorant of what the letter contained; he had not read it, nor had it been read aloud. Moreover, the secrecy and stealth of his own deeds, the quitting of the city without leave asked, gave strength to the suspicion and mistrust of the officer of the guard. Yet I confessed that in my heart of hearts I did not doubt Volmar was a villain and had entrapped Verhoeff for his own ends; but how to bring his villainy home to him, when he held all the cards, as we say, it outdid my wit to determine.

Nevertheless I engaged myself to do all that in me lay on behalf of the young man, and bidding him be of good cheer I betook myself to the council chamber, where the matter would without doubt be deliberated upon.

*VI*

The burghers were in full session when I entered the chamber, and I perceived that thunder was in the air. At my entrance they cast very lowering looks upon me; there was some whispering among them, and the Burgomaster shot me a crooked glance, and seemed to return a mute answer to something that Volmar, his neighbour of the right hand, had just said. Feigning blindness to these signs and tokens of trouble, I moved with easy gait to my place at the table, cast my hat upon it, and inquired of the Burgomaster what was the news of the day.

"Sir, sir," said the little man, his pendent chin shaking like the wattle of a turkey-cock, "this levity ill beseems you. You are aware that we have a traitor in our midst, a viper warmed in our bosom; you have even now come from speech with him. I pray the villain has confessed his sins."

"Why no, Mynheer," I said smoothly, "the villain is impenitent, and professes that he has done nought save in love and loyalty to the city. Surely the good repute of his family might dispose you, sirs, to hesitate before you condemn him unheard."

"His family, his family!" stuttered the Burgomaster, whom I perceived to be in his most exalted and arrogant mood. "Hold, sir; peruse this epistle, and say then whether he be not deserving of the extreme penalty."

The letter came to me by the hands of the six or seven councillors that sat between me and the Burgomaster, of whom some scowled, some glared, some looked compassionately upon me. I took the paper and cast an eye upon it, and immediately I understood that Jan Verhoeff was in even worse case than I had supposed. 'Twas a very brief epistle, with no superscription nor any signature at the end, written not by any man within the city, but by an enemy without. It warned the nameless receiver that the customary messenger having been slain, by Dutch peasants as 'twas thought, and his dispatch stolen, the last message had not come to the general's hand; but the writer opined that the city could not endure many days longer, and urged the receiver to employ all his arts upon he knew whom, and furthermore to certify that person that when by his good offices the city should be delivered up, his goods should be spared to him, with a share of the general booty.

"Sir," said the Burgomaster, when I had read the letter, "you behold a manifest proof of the traitor's villainy. He sends word of our hapless state to the enemy; he employs cunning machinations upon some ill-affected person in our city; he is sowing treason in our good field."

I made bold to say that there was no proof of the letter having been intended for Mynheer Verhoeff, whereupon he bade me look upon the cover, and when I did so I perceived, very faintly inscribed there, the letters J.V.

As I was considering this, suspecting that those letters had been inscribed upon the paper since it was wrested from Verhoeff, Mynheer Volmar spoke. He said that, clear though the testimony seemed to be, he would plead for mercy for the young man. His fortune being so much diminished from that whereto he had been born, he had without doubt been put to a fierce temptation. "And since," he proceeded, "I myself suffer at his hands, inasmuch as he sought to cast suspicion on me, whose whole concern is the welfare of the city, I may most fitly raise my voice in beseeching my brethren to remember the services rendered in time past by the young man's father, and, mindful of them, to deal mercifully with the son; not to bring him to trial and put him to open shame, but to hold him safe in ward while the city is still compassed about, and then to banish him without scandal to the common weal."

Perceiving the drift of this, and divining that Volmar had his own good reasons for cloaking the matter, I said with some bluntness that 'twas time to show mercy when guilt was proved. Volmar took me up insolently, declaring that I had no right nor title to speak on such a matter, and that being a stranger, come among them uncommended, and a house-mate with this abandoned traitor, I had best walk warily and manage my tongue, lest I found my own neck in jeopardy.

At this discourse, and the murmurs of approval that broke from certain of the councillors, I was pricked to indignation, and might have said more than wisdom warranted had not the Burgomaster, plainly ill at ease, interposed himself as peace-maker. I had reason to bless his intervention, because I was thereby hindered from saying in my haste that which I should assuredly have repented at my leisure. For it happened that the Burgomaster calling for the next business, Volmar brought forth the list of stores that it was in his duty to lay before the council every week. This he read out, the councillors harkening with gloomy countenances to the tale of diminished victuals and munitions of war. When he had made an end, the document strayed about the table, and presently came to the hand of the burgher next me, who held it in such manner that I was able to see it clearly. And then within my soul I cried blessings on the Burgomaster, in that he had checked my tongue, for so soon as my eyes fell upon this paper, I knew in a moment that the handwriting was the same as that upon the paper which John Temple had taken from the Spaniard, and which I had, even now, folded in my pocket.

I veiled my eyelids, lest my eyes should betray the joy of my discovery, for this did not rob me wholly of my caution, and I knew that I must first satisfy myself beyond doubt that the writings were the same. This could only be achieved by setting the two papers one against the other for comparison, and I saw not any means of doing this secretly. But within a little, chance gave me the opportunity I sought. The councillor that had the paper set it down upon the table, and joined with the others in talking of the trial to which Jan Verhoeff was to be brought on the morrow. While they were thus engaged I laid my hand upon the paper, and possessed myself of it; then, affecting a perfect indifference to the matter of their discourse, I rose from my place and went to the window, and there, turning my back upon the company, I drew from my pocket the paper John Temple had given me, and set it side by side with the other for just so long as sufficed me to compare them, and prove the writings to be in the selfsame hand. Which done, I took a turn about the chamber, and coming in due time to my place I laid the second paper where it had been before, and soon after departed.

I saw myself now deeply engaged in a matter after my own heart. "'Tis Time's glory," saith Will Shakespeare, "to unmask falsehood and bring truth to light"; and here was I a fellow-worker with Time. I considered within myself what course I should take. I might at once make disclosure of my discovery; but Volmar was so slippery a fellow that I might easily trip unless I had some further evidence of his villainy to lay before the council. Without doubt he would have ready some plausible explanation, the which might recoil upon me, being a stranger and one not held in high esteem. I resolved therefore to bide my time and say nought until I had my evidence all compact--unless indeed Jan Verhoeff were in extremity of peril.

The young man was brought to trial at the time appointed. I was not present in court, deeming it best to hold aloof until I could employ my apparatus to good effect. The only testimony that I myself might have given, touching the charge made against Verhoeff, was that I had seen him steal to the walls by night with Volmar at his heels, and this could not have turned to his favour. The evidence against him was so slight and thin-spun, that in time of peace, and before a just tribunal, it would not have been held sufficient to hang a dog; but his present judges being the magistrates of the city, with the Burgomaster as president, and all men's minds being sore troubled about the city's welfare, the verdict was given against him, and he was sentenced to be hanged on the tenth day thereafter.

The news was brought to me in my room by the young man's mother, who was utterly broken with grief and shame. She had never a doubt of his innocency, and besought me with many tears and supplications to save him. I had much ado to refrain from giving her positive assurance that her son should not die; but I deemed it better for my purpose that she should suffer ten days of suspense and anguish than that we should come under any suspicion by reason of her serenity and ease of mind. I put her off, therefore, with unsubstantial words of comfort. But my policy was undone that same evening, for about the hour of supper there came to the house a female figure close enshrouded in hood and cloak; and asking speech with me, she was admitted to the chamber wherein I sat with the widow lady, and casting off her hood revealed the wan, sorrowful face of Mistress Jacqueline, the Burgomaster's daughter.

"Oh, sir," she cried, flinging herself upon her knees and clasping her hands piteously, "oh, sir, save my lover! My father condemned him, but he is, I know, the cat's-paw of wicked men. Sir, I beseech you, save my lover!"

I raised her up, and my resolution utterly melted away. I did for the sweetheart what I had refused to do for the mother, assuring her that Jan Verhoeff should not die, I myself would prevent it; but it was necessary, for the due punishment of those that conspired against him, that none should so much as guess at anything being adventured on his behalf. At this the women were mightily cheered, but the widow bore me a grudge in that I had before withheld this solace from her; and I cannot say but that I deserved it.

I had no certain plan for establishing the treason of Mynheer Volmar; but I was resolved to keep a close watch upon him, deeming it likely that in mere self-confidence he would take a false step. While with exceeding care I held myself in the background, I contrived to learn all that was requisite about his doings. On Sunday I made one of the throng of spectators that witnessed his discharge of a single shot upon the Spanish lines, the which, as the Captain of the Guard had told me, was the charm whereby the city was protected for that day. I observed that the shot was brought from the store by Volmar's own servant; Volmar himself loaded the culverin, trained it, and set the match to the touch-hole. The burghers, with their wives and children, looked on as at a mystery, and when the shot fell upon some loose earth near the trenches, casting up a cloud of dust, they nodded and smiled, and some clapped their hands; and then they all went forthwith to church, Volmar leading the way.

I was on the point of following them, thinking no little scorn of such mummery as I had just witnessed, when, on casting my eye over the parapet, I observed a Spaniard move slowly towards the spot where the ball had fallen. He stood for a brief space as if contemplating the effect wrought thereby, and then returned within the camp.

Now there was something in the Spaniard's mien that bred a certain doubt in my mind. He had moved slowly, in the manner of a loiterer; and if this was the true measure of his interest, why, I questioned within myself, had he issued from the trenches at all, to observe the spot where a ball had fallen harmlessly, as one had fallen many a Sunday before? His demeanour was not that of a man truly curious. I sought in my mind for some likely explanation of his strange action, and the more I thought upon it, the more puzzled and suspicious I became. But there was nothing to be done on the instant, so I spoke to the sentinel on the parapet, bidding him acquaint me if he saw any further movement among the Spaniards, and then I found the Captain of the Guard, whom I asked to issue the same command to the men that should keep watch in turn for the rest of the day.

At eventide, nothing having been reported to me, I resolved to go forth myself so soon as it became dark and examine the place where the shot had struck. It was an enterprise, I knew, that stood me in some danger, for I might be captured by the Spaniards, or by the burgher guard on my return, and this would bring me under suspicion, and was like to land me in the selfsame nobble as that wherein Jan Verhoeff already lay. I thought for a while of securing myself by acquainting the Captain of the Guard aforehand with my purpose, but seeing that I could have given him no reason for it save by making a clean breast of my suspicions, the which I was loth to do, I held my peace, resolving to take my risk.

Jan Verhoeff had disclosed to me, when I spoke with him in the bailey, the means whereby he had left the city. In the repairs that had been made hastily in the wall battered by the enemy, timber had been employed, and at one place there were two massy logs with a narrow space between, through which he had squeezed himself, and so come within a few spans of the moat. Thither I made my way by a roundabout course as soon as it was dark, and, choosing a moment when no sentinel was within hearing, I slipped into the moat, having left my boots at the foot of the wall, and swam across as quietly as an otter might have done.

On coming to the other side I bent my body low, and crept towards the Spanish lines, holding my dagger in my right hand. I had observed that the shot fell within a short space of the end of a garden wall which had been almost razed to the ground by the burghers' shots in the first hot days of the leaguer. To the right of this stood the stump of a tree. These were my landmarks, for the shot had come to earth somewhere between the tree and the end of the wall. In the darkness I could not hope to see the pit that the shot had made, but must find it by the touch of my feet.

I crept along by the wall, noiseless in my stockings, and coming to the end of it, bent myself yet lower and groped towards the tree. This I attained without having made any discovery, whereupon I turned about and went back, taking a course somewhat nearer to the moat, and so came again to the wall, having discovered nothing. Yet once more I sought the tree, now choosing a course nearer to the trenches, in which direction I heard the dull murmur of voices, yet not so near as to cause me any present disquietude; and so I groped along the ground until I came to a little hollow, where I halted, thinking it a likely place. There I dug away the earth with my hands, making no more noise than a mouse, and anon my fingers struck upon something hard and cold and round, the which, after a little more digging with hands and dagger, I unearthed, and found to be a round shot, as I had hoped. With this in my hands I stole along towards the shelter of the wall.

Hardly had I come there when I heard voices, somewhat louder than those I had heard before, and immediately after footsteps, coming towards me. I dare go no farther, but crouched behind the brickwork, which was no more than three spans high, holding my breath, and peering over the jagged edge of the wall. And I beheld three men as black blots moving in the darkness towards the very spot I had lately left. One of the three held a dark lantern, by whose light, turned from the city, the others began to search the ground. I heard them utter words of satisfaction when they came to the hole, and then I could not forbear chuckling, for the men, probing with their pikes, and finding nothing, let forth cries of astonishment, together with an oath or two. They consulted one with another, and one proposed that they should search around; but this the man that held the lantern scouted, declaring that he had no manner of doubt the place where they then stood was the end of their quest. Nevertheless his comrades prowled and probed, now to the right, anon to the left, and once came so near me that I gripped my dagger tight, ready to buy my safety with good steel. But they withdrew, and stood for some while talking together of this strange thing, and presently gat them back to their trenches, in marvellous puzzlement.

Thereupon I crept back to the moat, carrying the shot, and having swum across and recovered my boots, the which I could not pull over my wet stockings, I clambered up between the balks of timber, looked about to certify myself the coast was clear, and hastened by the same circuit to the widow's house.

There my servant was in wait for me, according to my bidding. I took him to my room, and setting the round shot before him, commanded him to examine it. He was a handy fellow, and had the rudiments of more trades than one. It was not long before he discovered, in the surface of the iron, a knob or boss, exceeding small, the which being touched, a narrow channel was revealed, wherein lay a short tube of the thickness of a finger.

"'Tis good locksmith's work, sir," he said with admiration, putting the tube into my hand. I looked therein, and discovered a small roll of paper, the which, upon my spreading it out, I saw was covered with writing in the Spanish tongue, and in the very hand of Volmar, but with no name either at head or at foot. I read the writing with a vast curiosity and eagerness, and what I read was this--

"_The victuals will last but one week longer. One of my foes will be hanged; the Englishman I go about to remove. Attack the wall over against the market. I vouch that in ten days the city will yield._"

Here was proof of as pretty a piece of villainy as the mind of man could conceive. Verhoeff was to be hanged; I myself to be removed; the wall over against the market was that which the Burgomaster had in charge, and the attack was to be directed thereupon with the intent to harass him and bring him to a frame of mind meet for surrender. A pretty plot indeed, and one that I rejoiced to have the means of circumventing.

I dismissed my servant and sat myself down to consider my ways. 'Twas necessary to my purpose that Volmar should be utterly confounded. I could brook no chance of his wriggling out of the full exposure of his guilt. Wherefore it seemed to me inexpedient that I should at once carry the traitorous letter to the council, for he had many friends therein, whom he might easily persuade that the writing was but a cunning imitation of his own, done by myself out of the despite and enmity I bore him; nor indeed could I explain how I had come by the paper, but by owning that I had gone from the city without authority, a thing he would find means to twist to my disadvantage. The end of my cogitation was that I resolved still to bide my time, not doubting that within the week something would happen to point my road clearly.

When I went abroad next day I perceived that black care had seized upon the people. The scarcity of victuals was known of all, and as the meaner folk felt the pinch of hunger more dearly they broke forth into murmurs and complaints. Dark looks were cast upon me as I took my way to the council chamber, and still darker met me there. Mindful of Volmar's intent to have me removed, I looked for some instant charge to be brought against me, as though I were a Jonah in the city; but nought was said openly, and I concluded that I must be on my guard against some secret machination--a knife in my back, or a stray bullet did I but show myself upon the ramparts. I was heedful, therefore, that day and the days succeeding, to go only in the middle of the street, and to keep within the house after nightfall, not deeming it any mark of valour to jeopardize the happiness of three good folk and the safety of the city by running into any needless danger.

As day followed day, I became aware that the people's discontent and queasiness was being fomented by the agents of Volmar, though that two-faced villain was most fervent, at the meetings of the council, in admonishing the burghers to endure to the end. Day after day the Spaniards plied their artillery upon the walls, chiefly upon that portion where the Burgomaster was in charge of the defences. The masonry was sore battered, many of the burghers were slain or maimed, and the Burgomaster himself, who endeavoured still to sustain the reputation he had achieved in that night sally, was struck upon the elbow by a fragment of stone, whereby the little man was afflicted more heavily in mind than in body. In his one ear, so to speak, Volmar whispered counsels of despair under a mask of encouragement; in the other I spoke words of comfort and good cheer, assuring him that, could he but resist a little longer, Prince Maurice would come to his succour, as he had promised. My influence, I knew, was sapped by Volmar's guileful insinuations, and I could not doubt that finally I should be worsted unless I could prove Volmar to be the traitor he was.