The Gadfly by Ethel Voynich (top fiction books of all time .txt) 📕

one of the interrogations, I am sure you would realize⁠—He needn’t know anything about it. You might overhear him from⁠—”

Montanelli turned round and looked at the Governor with an expression which his face did not often wear.

“I am a minister of religion,” he said; “not a police-spy; and eavesdropping forms no part of my professional duties.”

“I⁠—I didn’t mean to give offence⁠—”

“I think we shall not get any good out of discussing this question further. If you will send the prisoner here, I will have a talk with him.”

“I venture very respectfully to advise Your Eminence not to attempt it. The man is perfectly incorrigible. It would be both safer and wiser to overstep the letter of the law for this once, and get rid of him before he does any more mischief. It is with great diffidence that I venture to press the point after what Your Eminence has said; but after all I am responsible to Monsignor the Legate for the order of the town⁠—”

“And I,” Montanelli interrupted, “am responsible to God and His Holiness that there shall be no underhand dealing in my diocese. Since you press me in the matter, colonel, I take my stand upon my privilege as Cardinal. I will not allow a secret court-martial in this town in peacetime. I will receive the prisoner here, and alone, at ten tomorrow morning.”

“As Your Eminence pleases,” the Governor replied with sulky respectfulness; and went away, grumbling to himself: “They’re about a pair, as far as obstinacy goes.”

He told no one of the approaching interview till it was actually time to knock off the prisoner’s chains and start for the palace. It was quite enough, as he remarked to his wounded nephew, to have this Most Eminent son of Balaam’s ass laying down the law, without running any risk of the soldiers plotting with Rivarez and his friends to effect an escape on the way.

When the Gadfly, strongly guarded, entered the room where Montanelli was writing at a table covered with papers, a sudden recollection came over him, of a hot midsummer afternoon when he had sat turning over manuscript sermons in a study much like this. The shutters had been closed, as they were here, to keep out the heat, and a fruitseller’s voice outside had called: “Fragola! Fragola!”

He shook the hair angrily back from his eyes and set his mouth in a smile.

Montanelli looked up from his papers.

“You can wait in the hall,” he said to the guards.

“May it please Your Eminence,” began the sergeant, in a lowered voice and with evident nervousness, “the colonel thinks that this prisoner is dangerous and that it would be better⁠—”

A sudden flash came into Montanelli’s eyes.

“You can wait in the hall,” he repeated quietly; and the sergeant, saluting and stammering excuses with a frightened face, left the room with his men.

“Sit down, please,” said the Cardinal, when the door was shut. The Gadfly obeyed in silence.

“Signor Rivarez,” Montanelli began after a pause, “I wish to ask you a few questions, and shall be very much obliged to you if you will answer them.”

The Gadfly smiled. “My ch-ch-chief occupation at p-p-present is to be asked questions.”

“And⁠—not to answer them? So I have heard; but these questions are put by officials who are investigating your case and whose duty is to use your answers as evidence.”

“And th-those of Your Eminence?” There was a covert insult in the tone more than in the words, and the Cardinal understood it at once; but his face did not lose its grave sweetness of expression.

“Mine,” he said, “whether you answer them or not, will remain between you and me. If they should trench upon your political secrets, of course you will not answer. Otherwise, though we are complete strangers to each other, I hope that you will do so, as a personal favour to me.”

“I am ent-t-tirely at the service of Your Eminence.” He said it with a little bow, and a face that would have taken the heart to ask favours out of the daughters of the horseleech.

“First, then, you are said to have been smuggling firearms into this district. What are they wanted for?”

“T-t-to k-k-kill rats with.”

“That is a terrible answer. Are all your fellow-men rats in your eyes if they cannot think as you do?”

“S-s-some of them.”

Montanelli leaned back in his chair and looked at him in silence for a little while.

“What is that on your hand?” he asked suddenly.

The Gadfly glanced at his left hand. “Old m-m-marks from the teeth of some of the rats.”

“Excuse me; I was speaking of the other hand. That is a fresh hurt.”

The slender, flexible right hand was badly cut and grazed. The Gadfly held it up. The wrist was swollen, and across it ran a deep and long black bruise.

“It is a m-m-mere trifle, as you see,” he said. “When I was arrested the other day⁠—thanks to Your Eminence,”⁠—he made another little bow⁠—“one of the soldiers stamped on it.”

Montanelli took the wrist and examined it closely. “How does it come to be in such a state now, after three weeks?” he asked. “It is all inflamed.”

“Possibly the p-p-pressure of the iron has not done it much good.”

The Cardinal looked up with a frown.

“Have they been putting irons on a fresh wound?”

“N-n-naturally, Your Eminence; that is what fresh wounds are for. Old wounds are not much use. They will only ache; you c-c-can’t make them burn properly.”

Montanelli looked at him again in the same close, scrutinizing way; then rose and opened a drawer full of surgical appliances.

“Give me the hand,” he said.

The Gadfly, with a face as hard as beaten iron, held out the hand, and Montanelli, after bathing the injured place, gently bandaged it. Evidently he was accustomed to such work.

“I will speak about the irons,” he said. “And now I want to ask you another question: What do you propose to do?”

“Th-th-that is very simply answered, Your Eminence. To escape if I can, and if I can’t, to die.”

“Why ‘to die’?”

“Because