And if he could not cope with the doughty Anglo-American, then let him look to it.
What strength and skill failed to achieve, the a.s.sa.s.sin"s knife would accomplish.
"Did you see the girl that attended him to the gate?" demanded the mendicant friar, or Hunston, as it would be better to call him, since there is no further need of concealment.
"I did."
"And recognised her, Mathias?" he asked of the brigand captain.
"Yes; it is the pretty girl we stopped with her lover, the coy Marietta."
"Now that they are well off, we may as well set to work," said Hunston.
"Good."
Hunston threw back his friar"s cowl and produced a key.
"They have had many a good hunt for this," he said, with his old sinister laugh,
"I dare say."
"It was a lucky thing that the dainty little Marietta dropped it."
"Yes, it makes matters much easier for us to begin with."
The door yielded to the touch of the sham mendicant friar, and the three worthies entered the grounds.
Silently they stepped across a gra.s.splot, keeping a thick shrubbery between them and the house as far as they could, when just as they gained the shelter of a trellissed verandah, a dog within set up a most alarming noise.
The three robbers exchanged uneasy glances.
"Curse the beast!" muttered Mathias the captain; "he will ruin us."
Toro got ready his long hunting-knife and looked about.
But the dog was out of sight.
A lucky thing it was too for our old friend little Mike, for a touch with that ugly instrument would soon have stopped his singing.
Now, just above the verandah was a half-opened window, and into this Mathias peered anxiously.
No signs of Mike.
A voice was heard now calling to the faithful guardian of the house to be silent, but Mike refused emphatically to be comforted; thereupon, the person very imprudently called the dog to her and tied him up.
This did not quiet him.
So the person in question tripped down the garden to see if there was really any reason for the dog"s singular beheaviour.
In pa.s.sing down the path she went so close to the verandah, that the skirts of her dress actually brushed aside the creeping plants which garnished the trellis work.
"Snarling, barking little beast!" quoth Marietta to herself, "and all about nothing; I wish they would lose him."
But when she got to the bottom of the garden and discovered the garden door open, she altered her tone.
"How very silly of me to leave the door unlocked," she said to herself.
"Poor little fellow, poor Mike, I"m coming, good dog. Heard someone, I suppose. Good gracious, what"s that? I thought I saw something move there. I"m getting as nervous as a cat ever since those men stopped us and made me kiss them, the beasts. Ugh I how I loathe them, although there was one of them that was really not very bad-looking. I wonder where that poor old friar went to. What was that? Oh, how nervous I feel. I wish they had left me some one in the house besides that old deaf Constantino; he"s nice company truly for a girl. Bother the dog, what a noise he is kicking up."
And chatting thus, Marietta re-entered the house.
Meanwhile Mathias had clambered up the iron balcony and pushing open the gla.s.s door, or rather window, he entered the room.
It was the dining-room, and the remnants of a very sumptuous repast were yet upon the table.
"I"ll just take a gla.s.s of wine."
He did, too.
He took several gla.s.ses of wine, and then, as the fumes of the good liquor mounted to his brain, he grew generous, and he lowered a bottle out of the window to his two comrades beneath.
Toro grasped it, and sucked down a good half of it before it left his lips.
Then Hunston finished it off at a draught.
When Mathias had regaled himself, he made a move to the door.
There was no one about.
Not a sound.
Now was his time.
His object was to explore the house, and ascertain in what particular part of it the cash, the jewels, and the plate were kept.
When they had secured these, they could content themselves for the present at least.
Firstly, therefore, he tied up the silver spoons and knives and forks from the dinner table in a napkin, and dropped the bundle into Toro"s hat below.
Then he crept back through the room into the pa.s.sage.
This done, he waited for a while to listen, and a.s.suring himself that the coast was clear, he crept up.
On the next landing there were seven doors.
Six were shut, so he peeped into the seventh room, and just then he heard a noise below.
Someone coming up stairs.