"The chief of the party is that man who lies bleeding there; he is one of your attendants." One of the soldiers held a torch close to the man's face.
"It is Carpadon," Hannibal said.

"I believed him honest and faithful." "He is the tool of others, Hannibal; he has been well paid for this night's work." Hannibal gave orders for the prisoners to be strictly guarded, and then, with Hamilcar and Malchus, returned to his private study.

The lamps were lighted by the attendants, who then withdrew.
"Now, Malchus, tell us your story," Hannibal said.

"It seems strange to me that you should have said nought to your father or me of what you had learned, and left us to take such measures as might seem fit to us, instead of taking the matter into your own hands." "Had I had certainties to go upon I should assuredly have done so, but, as you will see when I tell you all I had learned, I had nothing but suspicions, and those of the vaguest, and for aught I knew I might be altogether in the wrong." Malchus then gave the full details of the manner in which his suspicions had been first excited, and in which on the previous night he had taken steps to ascertain whether there were any foundation for them.
"You see," he concluded, "there was no sort of certainty, nothing to prove that the money was not paid for the purchase of a horse or slave.
It was only the one fact that one of the party was a servant here that rendered what I discovered serious.

Had it not been for the fate of Hasdrubal I should never have given the matter a second thought; but, knowing that he was assassinated by a trusted servant, and seeing two men whose families I knew belonged to Hanno's faction engaged in secret talk with one of your attendants, the suspicion struck me that a similar deed might again be attempted.