Now, these researches after heretics invariably cost money, for they involved the services of spies. Obviously, therefore, friend Dirk, the Dutch Flounder, was a man to provide the butter in which he was going to be fried. Why, if any Hollander had a spark of humour he would see the joke of it himself—and Montalvo ended his reflections as he had begun them, with a merry peal of laughter, after which he rose and ate a most excellent breakfast.
It was about half-past five o’clock that afternoon before the Captain and Acting-Commandant Montalvo returned from some duty to which he had been attending, for it may be explained that he was a zealous officer and a master of detail. As he entered his lodgings the soldier who acted as his servant, a man selected for silence and discretion, saluted and stood at attention.
“Excellency, she is here, though I had difficulty enough in persuading her to come, for I found her in bed and out of humour.”
“Peace to your difficulties. Where is she?”
“Good, then see that no one disturbs us, and—stay, when she goes out follow her and note her movements till you trace her home.”
The man saluted, and Montalvo passed upstairs into the inner room, carefully shutting both doors behind him. The place was unlighted, but through the large stone-mullioned window the rays of the full moon poured brightly, and by them, seated in a straight-backed chair, Montalvo saw a draped form. There was something forbidding, something almost unnatural, in the aspect of this sombre form perched thus upon a chair in expectant silence. It reminded him—for he had a touch of inconvenient imagination—of an evil bird squatted upon the bough of a dead tree awaiting the dawn that it might go forth to devour some appointed prey.
“Is that you, Mother Meg?” he asked in tones from which most of the jocosity had vanished. “Quite like old times at The Hague—isn’t it?”
The moonlit figure turned its head, for he could see the light shine upon the whites of the eyes.
“Who else, Excellency,” said a voice hoarse and thick with rheum, a voice like the croak of a crow, “though it is little thanks to your Excellency. Those must be strong who can bathe in Rhine water through a hole in the ice and take no hurt.”