and it is not the way of his calling to take unnecessary risk.

We had just settled the matter in a mutually agreeable manner when
the door opened again, and his confederate - rendered uneasy, no
doubt, by his long absence - came to see what could be occasioning
this unconscionable delay in the slitting of the throats of a pair
of sleeping men.

Beholding us there in friendly conclave, and no doubt considering
that under the circumstances his intrusion was nothing short of an
impertinence, that polite gentleman uttered a cry - which I should
like to think was an apology for having disturbed us and turned to
go with most indecorous precipitancy.

But Gilles took him by the nape of his dirty neck and haled him back
into the room. In less time than it takes me to tell of it, he lay
beside his colleague, and was being asked whether he did not think
that he might also come to take the same view of the situation.
Overjoyed that we intended no worse by him, he swore by every saint
in the calendar that he would do our will, that he had reluctantly
undertaken the Chevalier's business, that he was no cut-throat, but
a poor man with a wife and children to provide for.

And that, in short, was how it came to pass that the Chevalier de
Saint-Eustache himself, by disposing for my destruction, disposed
only for his own. With these two witnesses, and Rodenard to swear
how Saint-Eustache had bribed them to cut my throat, with myself
and Gilles to swear how the attempt had been made and frustrated,
I could now go to His Majesty with a very full confidence, not only
of having the Chevalier's accusations, against whomsoever they