ay, almost
certainly, have gone as Messer Simone desired if only Messer Simone had
not been so bullishly besotted as to leave the name of a certain lady
out of his table of calculations; for Messer Griffo liked the scheme
well enough. Though it was, as it were, a double-edged weapon, cutting
this way at the Florentines of one party and that way at Arezzo, it was
a simple scheme enough that required no feigning to sustain it, no
dissimulation--qualities these apparently repugnant to the English
heart. Griffo also liked the florins of Messer Simone that were to be
spent so plenteously into his exchequer, and he liked exceedingly the
prospect of the later plunder of Arezzo. That he did not like Messer
Simone very much counted for little in the business. It was no part of
his practice to like or dislike his employers, so long as they paid him
his meed. Still, perhaps the fact that if Simone had not been his
employer he would have disliked him may have counted as an influence to
direct the course of later events.

Certainly Messer Griffo had no compunctions, no prickings of the
conscience, to perturb or to deflect the energy of his keen intelligence
from following the line marked out for it. That he was to dispatch
without quarter the flower of the youth of Florence troubled him, as I
take it, no whit. He was too imperturbable, too phlegmatic for that. Had
he been of our race he might, perhaps, have sighed over their fate, for
we that are of the race of Rome have some droppings of the old Roman
pity as ingredients in our composition. Messer Griffo was no such
fantastico, but a plain, straightforward, journeyman sword-bearer that
would kill any mortal or mortals whom he was paid to kill, unless--and
here is the key to his character and the explanation of all that
happened after--unless he was paid a better price by some one else not
to kill his intended victims. In this particular business he was, maugre
Messer Simone's beard, paid a better price not to do what Simone paid a
less price to have done. What that price was you shall learn in due
course.

XIX

THE RIDE IN THE NIGHT

Through all the quiet of that divine night the minions of the Messer
Simone had slipped hither and thither through the moon-lit streets of
Florence, bearing the orders of the captain of the Company of Death to
certain of his loyal lieutenants and faithful federates. And the order
that each man received was to report himself ready for activ