第59章 THE MARPLOT(5)

The Savoy was very quiet that night, and very dark.The few loiterers who observed the procession must have shrugged their shoulders and turned aside, zealous only to keep out of trouble.Such sights were not uncommon in the Savoy.They entered a high ruinous house on the east side, and after threading various passages reached a door which opened on a flight of broken steps where it was hard for more than one to pass at a time.Lovel heard the carriers of the dead grunting as they squeezed up with their burden.At the top another door gave on an outhouse in the yard of Somerset House between the stables and the west water-gate....Lovel, as he stumbled after them with Oates' bulk dragging at his arm, was in a confusion of mind such as his mean time-serving life had never known.

He was in mortal fear, and yet his quaking heart would suddenly be braced by a gust of anger.He knew he was a rogue, but there were limits to roguery, and something in him--conscience, maybe, or forgotten gentility--sickened at this outrage.He had an impulse to defy them, to gain the street and give the alarm to honest men.These fellows were going to construct a crime in their own way which would bring death to the innocent....Mr.Lovel trembled at himself, and had to think hard on his family in the Billingsgate attic to get back to his common-sense.He would not be believed if he spoke out.Oates would only swear that he was the culprit, and Oates had the ear of the courts and the mob.Besides , he had too many dark patches in his past.It was not for such as he to be finicking.

The body was pushed under an old truckle-bed which stood in the corner, and a mass of frails, such as gardeners use, flung over it for concealment.

Oates rubbed his hands.

"The good work goes merrily," he said."Sir Edmund dead, and for a week the good fawk of London are a-fevered.Then the haarrid discovery, and such a Praatestant uprising as will shake the maightiest from his pairch.

Wonderful are Goad's ways and surprising His jaidgements! Every step must be weighed, since it is the Laard's business.Five days we must give this city to grow uneasy, and then...The boady will be safe here?""I alone have the keys," said Prance.

The doctor counted on his thick fingers."Monday--Tuesday--Waidnesday--aye, Waidneday's the day.Captain Bedloe, ye have chairge of the removal.Before dawn by the water-gate, and then a chair and a trusty man to cairry it to the plaace of discovery.Ye have appainted the spoat?""Any ditch in the Marylebone fields," said Bedloe.

"And before ye remove it--on the Tuesday naight haply--ye will run the boady through with his swaard--Sir Edmund's swaard.""So you tell me," said Bedloe gruffly, "but I see no reason in it.The foolishest apothecary will be able tell how the man met his death."Oates grinned and laid his finger to his nose."Ye laack subtelty, fraiend.

The priests of Baal must be met with their own waipons.Look ye.This poor man is found with his swaard in his braist.He has killed himself, says the fool.Not so, say the apothecaries.Then why the swaard" asks the coroner.

Because of the daivilish cunning of his murderers, says Doctor Taitus Oates.A clear proof that the Jaisuits are in it, says every honest Praatistant.D'ye take me?"Bedloe declared with oaths his admiration of the Doctor's wit, and good humour filled the hovel; All but Lovel, who once again was wrestling with something elemental in him that threatened to ruin every thing.He remembered the bowed stumbling figure that had gone before him in the Marylebone meadows.Then he had been its enemy; now by a queer contortion of the mind he thought of himself as the only protector of that cold clay under the bed--honoured in life, but in death a poor pawn in a rogue's cause.He stood a little apart from the others near the door, and his eyes sought it furtively.He was not in the plot, and yet the plotters did not trouble about him.They assumed his complaisance.Doubtless they knew his shabby past.