Halfman shook his head, and a knowing smile twisted his mouth awry.
"Nay, Sir Rufus, with your favor, you must do your own killing," he said.
"Why, so I will," Rufus answered, angrily. "I will call up the household, lay hands on the rascal, back him to the wall, and bang a fusillade into him."
"Call up the household!" he crowed. "Do you think they would come at your call? Do you think they would serve you against my lady? Why, they would fling you into the fish-pools if she bade them do so."
The face of Sir Rufus showed that through all his fury he still retained sufficient command of his reason to know that what Halfman said was more than true. Halfman went leisurely on:
"You cannot employ your own men on the business, neither, for they must march to Oxford with the King. In little it comes to this: if you want a thing done, do it yourself."
"You are in the right," Sir Rufus agreed, gloomily. "This fellow was doomed long since. It is no more than common justice to put him out of the way. But I ride with the King."
"You need not ride very far," Halfman suggested. "A little way on the road you can slip aside unseen and get back here by a bridle-path. Watch at the western gate of the park. His horse will be waiting for him there to carry him to Cambridge. After his tender leave-taking he will come to his exit a clear mark on the white garden-path for a steady hand holding a pistol. So you can whistle 'Good-night, cuckoo,' as you haste to o'ertake the King."
"'Tis an ingenious scheme," Sir Rufus mused. Halfman laughed grimly.
"Oh, I am a pattern of strategy; this is but a simple ambuscado, a tame trap. You are a sure shot, I know; you cannot miss your bird. You need waste no time in making sure that he is stark. I shall be at hand to make sure, and will soon stick him in a ditch to wait for judgment."
Sir Rufus clapped Halfman on the shoulder.
"Your wit has a most pleasant invention," he approved. "She will soon forget this whining wry-face."
Halfman disengaged himself from the pressure of his companion's hand.
"It is so to be hoped," he said, drearily; "it is so to be believed. Woman's love-memory is a kind of quicksand that can swallow a score or so of gallant gentlemen and show no trace of their passage."