e but to call the watch from the
Tertasse and you will be haled to the lock-up, and jailed and whipped,
if not worse! And that jade with you! _Stultus es?_ Do you hear? Messer
Syndic, will you be thwarted in this fashion? Call these lawbreakers to
order and bid them have done!"

"Put up!" the Syndic cried, hoarse with rage. He was beside himself,
when he thought of the position in which he had placed himself. He
looked at the two as if he would fain have slain them where they stood.
"Or I call the watch, and it will be the worse for you," he continued.
"Do you hear me? Put up?"

"He shall not go upstairs!" Claude answered, breathing quickly. He was
pale, but utterly and fixedly resolved. If Basterga made a movement to
attack him, he would run him through whatever the consequences.

"Then, fool, I will call the watch!" Blondel babbled, fairly beside
himself.

Claude had no answer to that; only they should not go up. It was the
girl's readier wit furnished the answer.

"Call them!" she cried, in a clear voice. "Call the watch, Messer
Syndic, and I will tell them the whole story. What Messer Blondel would
have had me do, and get, and give."

"It was for the State!" the Syndic hissed.

"And is it for the State that you come to-day with that man?" she
retorted, and with her outstretched finger she accused Basterga of
unspoken things. "That man! Last night you would have had me rob him.
The day before he was a traitor. To-day he and you are one. Are one!
What are you plotting together?"

The Syndic shrank from the other's side under the stab of her
words--words that, uttered at random, flew, straight as the arrow that
slew Ahab, to the joint of his armour. "To-day you and that man are
one," she repeated. "One! What are you plotting together?"

She knew as much as that, did she? She knew that they were one, and that
they were plotting together; while in the Council men were clamouring
for the Paduan's arrest, and were growing suspicious because he was not
arrested--Baudichon, whom he had called a fat hog, and Petitot, that
slow, plodding sleuth-hound of a patriot. What if light fell on the true
state of things--and less than the girl had said might cast that light?
Then the warrant might go, not for the Paduan only, but for himself. Ay,
for him! For with an enemy ever lying within a league of the gates
warrants flew quickly in Geneva. Men who sleep ill of nights, and take
the cock-crow for war's alarum, are suspicio