Romance

I hadn't any doubt that, as far as he knew, he was speaking the truth. He was a man, very evidently, of a weary and naive simplicity. Perhaps it was really true—that I should only have to explain; perhaps it was all over.

O'Brien came into the room with the casual step of an official from an office entering another's room.

It was as if seeing me were a thing that he very much disliked—that he came because he wanted to satisfy himself of my existence, of my identity, and my being alone. The slow stare that he gave me did not mitigate the leisureliness of his entry. He walked behind the table; the judge rose with immense deference; with his eternal smile, and no word spoken, he motioned the judge to resume the examination; he stood looking at the clerk's notes meditatively, the smile still round lips that had a nervous tremble, and eyes that had dark marks beneath them. He seemed as if he were still smiling just after having been violently shaken.

The judge went on examining the Lugareno.

'Do you know whence the senor came?'

'Excellency, Excellency....' The man stuttered, his eyes on O'Brien's face.

'Nor how long he was in the town of Rio Medio?' the judge went on.

O'Brien suddenly drooped towards his ear. 'All those things are known, senor, my colleague,' he said, and began to whisper.

The old judge showed signs of very naive astonishment and joy.

'Is it possible?' he exclaimed. 'This man? He is very young to have committed such crimes.'

The clerk hurriedly left the room. He returned with many papers. O'Brien, leaning over the judge's shoulder, emphasized words with one finger. What new villainies could O'Brien be meditating? It wasn't possibly the Lugareno's suggestion that I had lured men to murder Don Balthasar? Was it merely that I had infringed some law in carrying off Seraphina?

The old judge said, 'How lucky, Don Patricio! We may now satisfy the English admiral. What good fortune!'

He suddenly sat straight in his chair; O'Brien behind him scrutinized my face—to see how I should bear what was coming.

'What is your name?' the judge asked peremptorily.

I said, 'Juan—John Kemp. I am of noble English family; I am well enough known. Ask the Senor O'Brien.'

On O'Brien's shaken face the smile hardened.

'I heard that in Rio Medio the senor was called... was called...' He paused and appealed to the Lugareno.

'What was he called—the capataz the man who led the picaroons?'

The Lugareno stammered, 'Nikola... Nikola el Escoces, Senor Don Patricio.'

'You hear?' O'Brien asked the judge. 'This villager identifies the man.'

'Undoubtedly—undoubtedly,' the Juez said. 'We need no more evidence.... You, Senor, have seen this villain in Rio Medio, this villager identifies him by name.'

I said, 'This is absurd. A hundred witnesses can say that I am John Kemp....'

'That may be true,' the Juez said dryly, and then to his clerk:

'Write here, 'John Kemp, of noble British family, called, on the scene of his crimes, Nikola el Escoces, otherwise El Demonio.''

I shrugged my shoulders. I did not, at the moment, realize to what this all tended.

The judge said to the clerk, 'Read the Act of Accusation. Read here....' He was pointing to a paragraph of the papers the clerk had brought in. They were the Act of Accusation, prepared long before, against the man Nichols.

This particular villainy suddenly became grotesquely and portentously plain. The clerk read an appalling catalogue of sordid crimes, working into each other like kneaded dough—the testimony of witnesses who had signed the record. Nikola had looted fourteen ships, and had apparently murdered twenty-two people with his own hand—two of them women—and there was the affair of Rowley's boats. 'The pinnace,' the clerk read, 'of the British came within ten yards. The said Nikola then exclaimed, 'Curse the bloodthirsty hounds,' and fired the grapeshot into the boat. Seven were killed by that discharge. This I saw with my own eyes.... Signed, Isidoro Alemanno.' And another swore, 'The said Nikola was below, but he came running up, and with one blow of his knife severed the throat of the man who was kneeling on the deck....'

There was no doubt that Nikola had committed these crimes; that the witnesses had sworn to them and signed the deposition.... The old judge had evidently never seen him, and now O'Brien and the Lugareno had sworn that I was Nikola el Escoces, alias El Demonio.

My first impulse was to shout with rage; but I checked it because I knew I should be silenced. I said:

'I am not Nikola el Escoces. That I can easily prove.'

The Judge of the First Instance shrugged his shoulders and looked, with implicit trust, up into O'Brien's face.

'That man,' I pointed at the Lugareno, 'is a pirate. And, what is more, he is in the pay of the Senor Juez O'Brien. He was the lieutenant of a man called Manuel-del-Popolo, who commanded the Lugarenos after Nikola left Rio Medio.'

'You know very much about the pirates,' the Juez said, with the sardonic air of a very stupid man. 'Without doubt you were intimate with them. I sign now your order for committal to the carcel of the Marine Court.'