Here the Syndic paused, as if to collect his thoughts.
"You saw him again?" prompted the Deputy.
"Alas, yes! He came to me and tempted me, and I succumbed. For a sum of money I agreed to assist him in his scheme. I knew I was doing a criminal act, but the bribe he offered me quieted all my scruples," Ucelli resumed. "I am a poor man, and I fell!"
"How much did he offer you?" demanded Vinci.
"It was fifty thousand liras," replied Ucelli. "Imagine, Excellency, the temptation to a poor man like myself!"
"Fifty thousand liras!" exclaimed the Deputy. "It is a large sum of money."
"Fifty thousand liras," thought Gilbert; "how much is that in English money?" A mental calculation showed him that it was nearly two thousand pounds. Where, he wondered, had Silwood got such a sum? But Ucelli was speaking.
"Yes, he offered me fifty thousand liras," repeated the Syndic, "and I swallowed the bait--like a fool. But I did not consent all at once. I knew the proceeding he proposed was dangerous in the extreme; but he allayed my fears by declaring it was impossible that it should ever be found out."
The Syndic stopped, overcome with self-pity.
"His proposal was that I should have him in my house here, and soon after he was to pretend to be ill of cholera. After a short interval it was to be given out that he had died, while I was to have an imaginary body buried. There were so many deaths here at the time, and consequently so much confusion, that there was no difficulty in carrying out his plan."
"So you were right," said the Deputy to Gilbert.
"I issued a false certificate, and at Silwood's dictation penned the letter sent to Mr. Eversleigh's father," went on the Syndic, now bent on leaving nothing untold. "And it was he who arranged I should have in my possession the letters, money, clothes, and other articles which belonged to him."
"To give colour to the fiction of Silwood's death?" asked the Deputy.
"Precisely. I thought we had foreseen everything, and that discovery was impossible. Alas! but we are blind fools! I hoped, when inquiries came, I should be able to satisfy them easily. The two men who came to make inquiries before Mr. Eversleigh, I had no difficulty with."
"What?" he cried. "Two men before me! What do you mean?"