The Laughing Cavalier by Baroness Orczy (best 7 inch ereader .TXT) 📕

to flee the country as you fled from it once before, branded as traitors, recaptured mayhap, dragged before the tribunal of a man who has already shown that he knows no mercy. Gilda’s freedom would have meant for you, for me, for Heemskerk, van Does and all the others, torture first and a traitor’s death at the last.”

“You need not remind me of that,” rejoined Stoutenburg more calmly. “Gilda has been sacrificed for me and by God I will requite her for all that she has endured! My life, my love are hers and as soon as the law sets me free to marry she will have a proud position higher than that of any other woman in the land.”

“For the moment she is at the mercy of that blackguard⁠ ⁠…”

“And I tell you that I can find out where she is.”

“How?”

“The woman who accosted Gilda last night, who acted for the knave as a decoy, was the Spanish wench whom he had befriended the night before.”

“You saw her?”

“Quite distinctly. She passed close to me when she ran off after having done her work. No doubt she is that rascal’s sweetheart and will know of his movements and of his plans. Money or threats should help me to extract something from her.”

“But where can you find her?”

“At the same lodgings where she has been these two nights, I feel sure.”

“It is worth trying,” mused Beresteyn.

“And in the meanwhile we must not lose sight of our knave. Jan, my good man, that shall be your work. Mynheer Beresteyn will be good enough to go with you as far as the tapperij of the Lame Cow, and there point out to you a man whom it will be your duty to follow step by step this evening until you find out where he intends to pitch his tent for the night. You understand?”

“Yes, my lord,” said Jan, smothering as best he could an involuntary sigh of weariness.

“It is all for the ultimate triumph of our revenge, good Jan,” quoth Stoutenburg significantly, “the work of watching which you will do this night is at least as important as that which you have so bravely accomplished these past four days. The question is, have you strength left to do it?”

Indeed the question seemed unnecessary now. At the word “revenge” Jan had already straightened out his long, lean figure and though traces of fatigue might still linger in his drawn face, it was obvious that the spirit within was prepared to fight all bodily weaknesses.

“There is enough strength in me, my lord,” he said simply, “to do your bidding now as always for the welfare of Holland and the triumph of our faith.”

After which Stoutenburg put out the light, and with a final curt word to Jan and an appeal to Beresteyn he led the way out of the room, down the stairs and finally into the street.

XXIV The Birth of Hate

Here the three men parted; Beresteyn and Jan to go to the Lame Cow where the latter was to begin his work of keeping track of Diogenes, and Stoutenburg to find his way to that squalid lodging house which was situate at the bottom of the Kleine Hout Straat where it abuts on the Oude Gracht.

It had been somewhat impulsively that he had suggested to Beresteyn that he would endeavour to obtain some information from the Spanish wench as to Diogenes’ plans and movements and the whereabouts of Gilda, and now that he was alone with more sober thoughts he realised that the suggestion had not been over-backed by reason. Still as Beresteyn had said: there could be no harm in seeking out the girl. Stoutenburg was quite satisfied in his mind that she must be the rascal’s sweetheart, else she had not lent him an helping hand in the abduction of Gilda, and since he himself was well supplied with money through the generosity of his rich friends in Haarlem, he had no doubt that if the wench knew anything at all about the rogue, she could easily be threatened first, then bribed and cajoled into telling all that she knew.

Luck in this chose to favour the Lord of Stoutenburg, for the girl was on the doorstep when he finally reached the house where two nights ago a young soldier of fortune had so generously given up his lodgings to a miserable pair of beggars. He had just been vaguely wondering how best he could⁠—without endangering his own safety⁠—obtain information as to which particular warren in the house she and her father inhabited, when he saw her standing under the lintel of the door, her meagre figure faintly lit up by the glimmer of a street-lamp fixed in the wall just above her head.

“I would have speech with thee,” he said in his usual peremptory manner as soon as he had approached her, “show me the way to thy room.”

Then as, like a frightened rabbit, she made ready to run away to her burrow as quickly as she could, he seized hold of her arm and reiterated roughly:

“I would have speech of thee, dost hear? Show me the way to thy room at once. Thy safety and that of thy father depend on thy obedience. There is close search in the city just now for Spanish spies.”

The girl’s pale cheeks took on a more ashen hue, her lips parted with a quickly smothered cry of terror. She knew⁠—as did every stranger in these Dutch cities just now⁠—that the words “Spanish spy” had a magical effect on the placid tempers of their inhabitants, and that many a harmless foreign wayfarer had suffered imprisonment, aye and torture too, on the mere suspicion of being a “Spanish spy.”

“I have nothing to fear,” she murmured under her breath.

“Perhaps not,” he rejoined, “but the man who shelters and protects thee is under suspicion of abetting Spanish spies. For his sake ’twere wiser if thou didst obey me.”

Stoutenburg had every reason to