“But not the rubber, my son.  Listen.  When you set a trap for a rat or a lion, do you scare the animal into it, or do you lure him with a tempting bait?  I have laid the trap; he and his friend will walk into it.  I am not a police officer.  I make no arrests.  My business is to avert political calamities, without any one knowing that these calamities exist.  That is the real business of a secret agent.  Let him dig up his fortune.  Who has a better right? Peste!  The pope will not crown him in the gardens of the Tuileries.  What!” with a ring in his voice Fitzgerald had never heard before; “am I one to be overcome without a struggle, without a call for help?  The trap is set, and in forty-eight hours it will be sprung.  Be calm, my son.  Tonight we should not find a horse or carriage in the whole town of Ajaccio.”

“But what are you going to do?”

“Go to Aitone, to find a hole in the ground.”

“But the admiral!”

“Let him gaze into the hole, and then tell him what you will.  I owe him that much.  Come on!”

“Where?”

“To the admiral, to tell him his secretary is a fine rogue and that he has stolen the march on us.  A good chase will soften his final disappointment.”

“You’re a strange man.”

“No; only what you English and Americans call a game sport.  To start on even terms with a man, to give him the odds, if necessary.  What! have beaters for my rabbits, shoot pigeons from traps? Fi donc!”

“Hang it!” growled the young man, undecided.

“My son, give me my way.  Some day you will be glad.  I will tell you this:  I am playing against desperate men; and the liberty, perhaps honor, of one you love is menaced.”

“My God!”

“Sh!  Ask me nothing; leave it all to me.  There!  They are coming.  Not a word.”

The admiral’s fury was boundless, and his utterances were touched here and there by strong sailor expressions.  The scoundrel!  The black-leg!  And he had trusted him without reservation.  He wanted to start at once.  Laura finally succeeded in calming him, and the cold reason of M. Ferraud convinced him of the folly of haste.  There was a comic side to the picture, too, but they were all too serious to note it; the varied tints of the dressing-gowns, the bath-slippers and bare feet, the uncovered throats, the tousled hair, the eyes still heavy with sleep.  Every one of the party was in Ferraud’s room, and their voices hummed and murmured and their arms waved.  Only one of them did Ferraud watch keenly; Hildegarde.  How would she act now?

Fitzgerald’s head still rang, and now his mind was being tortured.  Laura in danger from this madman?  No, over his body first, over his dead body.  How often had he smiled at that phrase; but there was no melodrama in it now.  Her liberty and perhaps her honor!  His strong fingers worked convulsively; to put them round the blackguard’s throat!  And to do nothing himself, to wait upon this Frenchman’s own good time, was maddening.