With a quick gesture Boneparte waved Roger aside and began to walk up and down, his hands clasped behind him. Six paces forward, six paces back. For a full two minutes he strode back and forth, deep in thought. Suddenly he halted facing Roger, and cried:
'You are right! They attempted to force me to sign a document re-creating the Serenissima with a Doge and all their other outworn trappings. They threatened to carry me off and starve me into ordering the withdrawal of our garrison.' Singing round upon the Venetians he stormed at them:
'You are a miserable, cowardly people, unfit for liberty. You no longer have land or water of your own. I will take all your ships, despoil your arsenal, remove all your cannon and wreck your bank. Then I will hand you over to the Austrians.
A wail went up. The Venetians fell upon their knees shouting cries and pleas. 'No! No! Anything but that! Have mercy on us. We will do whatever you wish. Anything. Anything. We will be loyal to France. We swear it!'
'Silence!' he snapped. 'You are incapable of loyalty! I have delayed signing a peace only for your sakes, but I'll delay no longer. The Emperor wants your city; he shall have it. You would make slaves of one another. Very well then; you shall all become the slaves of Austria.'
Roger's heart warmed within him. Whatever might happen now he had cleared the big fence. He had preserved Venice from domination by France. In any future combination of the Powers against her, it would prove a valuable bulwark. By patient intrigue, coupled with audacity, he had once more struck a mighty blow for England.
To Boneparte he said, 'Mon General, you should know that there is one man here more treacherous than all the rest. He joined this conspiracy only to make use of it for his own ends. He has kept in touch with Villetard with the object of betraying his friends to us when the time was ripe and claiming as his reward that you should make him First Magistrate of Venice. Any man so despicable deserves death. He is my personal enemy, and I ask from you the right to execute him,'
Malderini had taken no part in the fighting or in seizing Boneparte. He had watched the coup develop with great satisfaction and, when Junot had arrived with the troops, remained undisturbed. He had been expecting events to take exactly that course and that, when the other conspirators were arrested and led away, Villetard would appear to present him to Boneparte and praise the part he had played. Then, on seeing Roger enter the salon, he had suddenly been seized with fear that even if his enemy's presence there were pure chance, it might bring about the wrecking of all his plans. Since, he had been watching the proceedings with mounting dismay and apprehension.
Now, as Roger denounced him, he turned, dived between two soldiers, seized the door-knob of the kitchen door and strove to open it. But it was still bolted on the other side. The two soldiers grabbed him by the shoulders and swung him round.
Pointing at him, Roger cried, 'That is the arch-traitor Bring him here!'
Malderini was thrust forward through the murmuring crowd until he was only a yard from Boneparte. His sagging, old-woman's face was grey with terror, but with a great effort he pulled himself together and cried:
'General, you must hear me. This accusation is false. It is made by a man who bears me a grudge because, believing him to be an English spy, 1 had him imprisoned in the Leads. But that is not all. As a man you owe me some consideration. What will be said of you if you condemn to death a man whose wife you have stolen?'
'You must be mad,' Boneparte snapped. 'I do not know your wife.'
With a bitter, high-pitched laugh, Malderini pointed at Sirisha. 'Not know her! Why, there she sits. She was brought here for your pleasure. On our entering this room, we surprised you having supper with her.'
Boneparte jerked his head round and fixed his eyes on Roger. 'Is this true? Have you made use of a political situation to get the best of this man in some private quarrel you have with him?'
'Yes,' Roger admitted. The Princess is his wife; but it was only by bringing her here I could make quite certain that he would come here with the others. If I had not, he might have betrayed their intention while himself remaining in Venice.'
'No, no!' Malderini cried. 'You are right, General, He has abused your confidence to pursue a private feud. And he has dragged your name in the mud to do it. All Venice knows that for the past few days you have been paying visits in secret to the city, and…'
'What nonsense is this?' Boneparte burst out. 'I have never been near the place.'
A sudden murmur arose from the Venetians. 'Oh, oh!' 'We are at your mercy; why deny it?' 'That you have been in the city is common knowledge.'
'Yes,' Malderini hurried on. 'And my enemy must have pointed out my wife to you. It is said everywhere that you had displayed an interest in her. Then, this morning, he abducted her in broad daylight to bring her here.'
'Breuc! What have you to say?' The Corsican's words cracked like pistol shots.
'I do not deny it,' Roger replied tersely. 'Rumours that you were in Venice had to be put round to induce the conspirators to plan this attempt to kidnap you. I abducted his wife with the help of a boat-load of French sailors to blaze the trail more surely. Only by so doing could I make certain of luring him here tonight.'
Malderini gave a sudden chuckle. 'See, General, where this fool's personal thirst for revenge has landed you. We cannot stop you throwing us all into Leads, but what will Venice say? What will the world say? No one will believe that we came here to kidnap you. They will believe that I came here with my friends to rescue my wife from dishonour. They will say that you are a mean, unscrupulous tyrant. That you abused your power to have my wife abducted. That when discovered and reproached, instead of restoring her to me, you were so furious at being actually caught out in your evil design that you decided to do your best to silence us. In the hope of doing so you falsely accused us of this plot, so that you could send us all to prison. And that, to give credence to a serious plot having existed, you have gone to the length of punishing all Venice by throwing her to the Austrians.'
The Venetians had hung breathlessly upon his words, and now, seeing a hope of escaping the penalty for their night's work, they cried: 'Yes, yes!' 'He is right!' 'Everyone will believe that we came here to rescue her.' 'They'll hold your name infamous.' They'll say you gave us to the Austrians to cover up a plot that never existed.' 'Italy has hailed you as the new Caesar; tomorrow you'll be known as another Heilogabolus.'
Boneparte's pale face had gone chalk-white. Once more he turned to Roger, and snarled, 'You got me into this! Get me out or I'll have you chained for life to an oar in a galley!'
Epilogue
'And then?' exclaimed Georgina, eagerly. 'And then?'
Roger had paused in his story to refill her goblet and his own with champagne. Giving a light shrug, he replied, 'Why, m'dear, being much averse to spending the rest of my life as a galley slave, I was under the necessity of persuading him that he need have no fears for his reputation.'
'Wretch that you are to tantalise me so!' She stamped a small foot. 'Unless you had somehow escaped the Corsican's wrath you would not be here. But how? By what trickery? Tell me this moment.'
The 'here' that Georgina referred to was her boudoir in the Berkeley Square mansion that, as the mother of the young Earl of St. Ermins, she occupied when in London. It was mid-December, very cold and snowing outside; but in the small boudoir, with a good log fire flickering on the ceiling, and the silk-covered walls patterned with Chinese junks, pheasants and pagodas, it was warm and cosy. Instead of having supper served in the chilly dining-room, they had had it sent up there, and now sat at their ease on a deep sofa before the fire.