The First Sir Percy Baroness Orczy (fb2 epub reader .TXT) 📖

chair, striving to look dignified and detached. His arm was thrown over the table, and with his sharply pointed nails he was drumming a devil’s tatoo on the board.

Alone, the blind man appeared perfectly serene. After that brief moment of comparative lucidity, he had relapsed into somnolence. Occasional loud snores testified that he was once more wandering in the Elysian fields of unconsciousness.

Half an hour after midnight Jan returned.

“There is no doubt about it,” were the first words he spoke. “An attack on Ede appears to be in progress, and the Stadtholder left his camp at Utrecht a couple of hours ago with a force of four thousand men.”

He was out of breath, having run, he said, all the way from the Joris Poort, where he had gleaned the latest information.

“Who brought the news?” his lordship asked.

“No one seems to know, my lord,” Jan replied. “But everyone in the town has it. The rumour hath spread like wildfire. It started at opposite quarters of the city. The Nieuw Poort had it that a surprise attack had been delivered on Ede earlier in the evening, and the Joris Poort that the Stadtholder and his force are on the move. The captains at the gates had heard the news from runners who had come direct from Utrecht and from Ede.”

“Where are those runners now?”

“In both cases the captains sent them back for further information. The fellows were willing enough to go, for a consideration; but the business has become a dangerous one, for the roads to Utrecht and Ede, they averred are already full of the Stadtholder’s vedettes.”

“Bah!” Stoutenburg ejaculated contemptuously. “A device for extorting money!”

“Probably,” Jan riposted dryly. “But the money will be well spent if we get the information. The men are not to be paid until they return. And if they do not return⁠—” Jan shrugged his shoulders. If the spies did not return, it would go to prove that the Stadtholder’s vedettes were not asleep.

“I sent Piet Wallerin and one or two others out, too,” he added, “with orders to push on both roads as far as possible, and bring back any information they can obtain⁠—the sooner the better.

“They have not yet returned?” Stoutenburg asked.

“Oh, no! They have only been gone half an hour.”

“Is the night very dark?”

“Very dark, my lord.”

“Piet may never get back.”

“In that case we shall know that the Stadtholder’s vanguard has sighted him,” Jan rejoined coolly. “Nothing else would keep Piet from getting back.”

Stoutenburg nodded approval.

“You think, then, that this varlet here spoke the truth?”

“I have no longer any doubt of it, my lord,” Jan gave reply. “Though I did not actually speak with the men who seem originally to have brought the news, the captains at the Poorts had no doubt whatever as to its authenticity. But we shall know for certain before dawn. Piet and the others will have returned by then⁠—or not, as the case may be. But we shall know.”

“And, of course, we are prepared?”

“To do just what your lordship commands. The men will be under arms within the next two hours, and I can seek the Master of the Camp, and send him at once to your lordship for instructions.”

“Mine instructions are simple enough, good Jan; and thou canst convey them to the Master of the Camp thyself. They are, to remain quiescent, under arms but asleep. To surrender the town if it be attacked⁠—”

“To surrender?” Jan protested with a frown.

“We must throw dust in the Stadtholder’s eyes,” Stoutenburg riposted. “Give the idea that we are feeble and unprepared, and that I have fled out of Amersfoort. The surrender of the city and its occupation will keep the main force busy, whilst Maurice of Nassau, anxious to possess himself of our person, will push on as far as the molen, where I, in the meanwhile, will be waiting for him.”

His voice rang with a note of excitement and of triumph.

“With the Stadtholder a prisoner in my hands,” he exclaimed, “I can command the surrender of all his forces. And then the whole of the Netherlands will be at my feet!”

Never, in his wildest dreams had he hoped for this. Fate, in very truth, had tired of smiting him, had an overfull cornucopia for him now and was showering down treasures upon him, one by one.

VII

It was Nicolaes who first remembered the blind man.

During the last momentous half-hour he had been totally forgotten. Stoutenburg during that time had been in close confabulation with Jan, discussing plans, making arrangements for the morrow’s momentous expedition. Neither of them seemed to feel the slightest fatigue. They were men of iron, whom their passions kept alive. But Nicolaes was a man of straw. He had been racked by one emotion after the other all day, and now he was so tired that he could hardly stand. He envied the blind man every time that a lusty snore escaped the latter’s lips, and tried to keep himself awake by going to the fire from time to time and throwing a log or two upon it. But he stood in too great an awe of his friend to dare own to fatigue when the future of his native land was under discussion.

It was really in order to divert Stoutenburg’s attention from these interminable discussions on what to do and what not to do on the morrow, that presently, during a pause, he pointed to Diogenes.

“What is to happen to this drunken loon?” he asked abruptly.

Stoutenburg grinned maliciously.

“Have no fear, friend Nicolaes,” he said. “The fate of our valued informer will be my special care. I have not forgotten him. Jan knows. While you were nodding, he and I arranged it all. You did not hear?”

Nicolaes shook his head.

“No,” he said. “What did you decide?”

“You shall see, my good Klaas,” Stoutenburg replied with grim satisfaction. “I doubt not but what you’ll be pleased. And since we have now finished the discussion of our plans, Jan will at once go and bid