“Take them,” said Cromwell.

Mordaunt bowed with a smile of triumphant ferocity.

“Did the people shout at all?” Cromwell asked.

“Very little, except `Long live Cromwell!’”

“Where were you placed?”

Mordaunt tried for a moment to read in the general’s face if this was simply a useless question, or whether he knew everything.  But his piercing eyes could by no means penetrate the sombre depths of Cromwell’s.

“I was so situated as to hear and see everything,” he answered.

It was now Cromwell’s turn to look fixedly at Mordaunt, and Mordaunt to make himself impenetrable.

“It appears,” said Cromwell, “that this improvised executioner did his duty remarkably well.  The blow, so they tell me at least, was struck with a master’s hand.”

Mordaunt remembered that Cromwell had told him he had had no detailed account, and he was now quite convinced that the general had been present at the execution, hidden behind some screen or curtain.

“In fact,” said Mordaunt, with a calm voice and immovable countenance, “a single blow sufficed.”

“Perhaps it was some one in that occupation,” said Cromwell.

“Do you think so, sir?  He did not look like an executioner.”

“And who else save an executioner would have wished to fill that horrible office?”

“But,” said Mordaunt, “it might have been some personal enemy of the king, who had made a vow of vengeance and accomplished it in this way.  Perhaps it was some man of rank who had grave reasons for hating the fallen king, and who, learning that the king was about to flee and escape him, threw himself in the way, with a mask on his face and an axe in his hand, not as substitute for the executioner, but as an ambassador of Fate.”

“Possibly.”

“And if that were the case would your honor condemn his action?”

“It is not for me to judge.  It rests between his conscience and his God.”

“But if your honor knew this man?”

“I neither know nor wish to know him.  Provided Charles is dead, it is the axe, not the man, we must thank.”

“And yet, without the man, the king would have been rescued.”

Cromwell smiled.

“They would have carried him to Greenwich,” he said, “and put him on board a felucca with five barrels of powder in the hold.  Once out to sea, you are too good a politician not to understand the rest, Mordaunt.”

“Yes, they would have all been blown up.”

“Just so.  The explosion would have done what the axe had failed to do.  Men would have said that the king had escaped human justice and been overtaken by God’s.  You see now why I did not care to know your gentleman in the mask; for really, in spite of his excellent intentions, I could not thank him for what he has done.”

Mordaunt bowed humbly.  “Sir,” he said, “you are a profound thinker and your plan was sublime.”