This plan succeeds. James
yells out of the window. Not wanting many spectators, he has, somehow,
locked the door leading into the gallery, while giving Ramsay a hint
to wait outside of the house, within hearing, and to come up by the
back staircase, which was built in a conspicuous tower.
The rest is easy. Gowrie may bring up as many men as he pleases, but
Ramsay has had orders to horrify him by saying that the King is slain
(this was alleged), and then to run him through as he gives ground, or
drops his points; this after a decent form of resistance, in which
three of the King's four men are wounded.
'Master of the human heart,' like Lord Bateman, James knows that
Ruthven will not merely leave him, when goaded by insult, and that
Gowrie, hearing of his brother's death, will not simply stand in the
street and summon the citizens.
To secure a witness to the truth of his false version of the matter
James must have begun by artfully bribing Henderson, Gowrie's steward,
either simply to run away, and then come in later with corroboration,
or actually to be present in the turret, and then escape. Or perhaps
the King told his man-in-the-turret tale merely 'in the air;' and then
Henderson, having run away in causeless panic, later 'sees money in
it,' and appears, with a string of falsehoods.
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